


A Court of Bonds and Fate

by alicewritesthings



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, MAAS Sarah J. - Works
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-08-03 08:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 42
Words: 42,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16322669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicewritesthings/pseuds/alicewritesthings
Summary: Nearly a century after the end of ACOWAR, Rhys and Feyre finally feel that they have created a safe enough environment to raise children in. The heirs, Clare and Dray, are an extension of their parents in nearly every way. However, as they come of age, they will experience struggles unlike any their parents have faced before, and the Inner Circle will struggle with the emotional weight of having children grow up and face pain.





	1. Chapter 1

Mor  
It had been eighty-one years. Good years, every one of them -- not perfect, but good.  
The biggest shift from the bad years to the good was a lack of battles to fight and enemies to vanquish. Honestly, we would have expected more from the remaining citizens of Hybern, but remaining citizens of Hybern were few and far between. Over half of those still alive were the ones that were rescued from dungeons they had been kept in, the ones who had refused to aid the cause and believe what the king had told them about humans. Those ones moved to Velaris and looked at our city as a beacon of everything good in the world.   
Velaris was better, and it was worse. First the better: it was no longer hidden. The increase of trade and visitors didn’t make us think Rhys had made the wrong choice during Amarantha’s reign, but it did remind us of all her tyranny had stolen, even from the people here. There was more to see, and more to do, now that there were visitors. Plus, the beauty was now being spread around the world, giving other countries a glimpse of what was possible to create.  
And then the things that were worse. There were two of them.   
First, the attacks on the city. Rare, but occurring every few decades. Something we had escaped during the years of terror, and something that took a toll out of Rhys’s soul every time it occurred. Without Feyre, I don’t know how he would have been able to look at those years as being good, as being a triumph on his part. But then again, that was hardly the first time Feyre had saved him.  
The second worse thing was the Court of Nightmares.  
They came to visit every few months. My father and a group that originally was only males, parading through the streets, admiring the sights with a gaze that made me feel sick. No businesses opened to them (a fact that strained relationships between the two courts sorely), but they were still there, poisoning our place. Our haven. The days when they visited were awful, and most of the time I would leave when they came-go with whoever could be spared and spend the day in that cabin, laughing about how many times Rhys and Feyre had fucked in it, ignoring what was going on below.  
We could survive it, though, and without much trouble. Because most days, we woke up and we were not scared or furious or lonely. We moved through the day without having to bear our souls or break ourselves, and we came home whole and healthy and without any new scars.   
That life was a balm for scars. Little by little, they faded.   
I saw the changes in Nesta and Elain the most-Rhys and Feyre tended to keep many of those things between themselves.   
Nesta smiled every now and then. Not usually at Cassian-him she would glare at, roll her eyes or bare her teeth, then quietly clasp hands and lead him home afterwards-but at Elain mostly, and Feyre, and Azriel once. She and Elain moved out into a house a few streets away, one with a huge yard for gardening. She went out dancing with us once, and didn’t hate it. And the best thing of all- we were out to dinner one night, and she was sitting between her sisters, and she looked at Feyre and said, “I’m happy.” And that was all.   
I knew Elain had been a joyful person, although I had never known her as such. But soon after the war, she started going out-shopping, or out to lunch with Nesta, or just into the backyard to get on her hands and knees and plant flowers. Regardless, it was the same as what I had seen with Feyre-that hollowness that had been inside her, that was slowly filling back up.   
She spoke to Lucien, who also stayed in the city-did not talk about the bond, or move forward on it, but she spoke to him and let him into her life. And Nesta didn’t kill him when he came over, which I guess is a testament to her love for Elain. Lucien braved Nesta’s glares, would just quietly walk to the backyard and start working beside Elain. Having that would certainly be better than nothing, Rhys told me once, drawing from experience. And Lucien didn’t seem miserable, although he certainly wanted more.  
Without looming battles to fight, Rhys and Feyre could risk alienating their armies a bit. So they took on the biases of the Illyrian camps as best they could. They got in bitter fights-sometimes even physical ones-over female’s rights to train and fly and be equal to the males in the camps. But they made changes, although each one took decades. In the time of peace, the medium-conservative lords could once again be convinced to stop wing-clipping. It was only the very worst ones who could not be convinced, but Rhys and Feyre were certainly strong enough to take physical measures against them. So it wasn’t always voluntary, but the practice did disappear.  
The biggest change: we all felt safe.  
Nesta and Elain felt safe despite their new bodies and lives, as they got used to them. They discovered that it was not impossible to find happiness in their new existences.  
Cassian and Azriel found that after decades without constant danger, they could manage a few minutes without being on guard. They could relax, and trust that we all would survive without constant vigilance on their part.  
I found that despite my father’s invasion of our city, despite the occasional sieges, I still believed that I was not about to face horrors like I had anytime soon.  
And Rhys and Feyre found that they believed the other was safe-a miracle in itself. They did not spend every waking moment terrified for the other’s safety.  
So of course, when they realized they were no longer constantly panicked about protecting someone, they decided to create someone new who they could panic about protecting. They chose to do this by spending a weekend at the cabin.   
And that is the story of how the heir of the Night Court was conceived.   
We were all thrilled when they told us, because it was so certainly the right time. It was the first time, actually-the first time in my life when I had felt safe enough that I thought having children to protect might not be a terrible idea. Sure, there had been five hundred years between the war and Amarantha, but the King of Hybern had been alive then.   
It was a good thing they waited until then, because Rhys’s protectiveness of Feyre when she was pregnant… equal to when she had been in mortal danger. He wanted her constantly resting, hardly doing anything-requests she followed only when she felt like it, but that was a good amount of the time. Especially in later months, when she would vomit every morning, sometimes before and after she had eaten.   
That was hard, especially because it reminded them both of after Under the Mountain, how broken she had once been. The whole pregnancy was hard. It didn’t bring them closer, exactly, because they were practically fused already, and it brought up some things they tried not to think about. But it was bearable, because there was a light at the end of the tunnel, ten months later.   
The birth was horrible. For everyone involved.  
Feyre struggled with it, as we all half-suspected she would, and as we had fully suspected, it drove Rhys mad. He was in the room with her, and his shields were up, but still we could feel his utter terror as she screamed and bled, as her heart stopped for a moment.   
Even if she hadn't been told not to get pregnant again, we still wouldn’t have let her.   
So she was weak immediately afterwards, but she lived, and so did the children.  
Yes, children.


	2. Chapter 2

Feyre  
The Bone Carver had shown us our firstborn child-a boy, with Rhys’s coloring but facial features more similar to mine. And he was right, as we had anticipated-Dray, short for Drakon, came into the world. He was named after a male who led the world the our Dray would.  
But then there was a second child-a girl with my hair and eyes, but Rhys’s skin tone. She also got Rhys’s trademark smirk, but we didn’t find that out right when she was born.  
We named her Clare, after Clare Beddor. A girl who would get a life in a world that would not have those tyrants, a girl who would not experience that torture. A girl who would get to help create the world she wanted to live in.  
I spent the next few months scarcely leaving the town house-partly because I had two newborns to take care of, and partly because I took a long time to heal after the birth. Rhys stayed nearly as much as I did, although he had to continue duties as High Lord when I could not perform mine.  
Dray was quieter, when he was a child.He was the first to crawl and the first to read. He loved bright colors, beets and strawberries and carrots, finger-painting on one wall we painted white for him. He was the most patient child I had ever known.  
Clare liked those things too, but she preferred running or even flying-tearing through the house, the only one of us with wings small enough to fit through the halls (Dray did not get the Illyrian genes). She was wild in a way that I had never been, that Rhys said reminded him of Cassian when they were young.  
Clare was like Rhys, Dray like me; the same similarities and differences, only the differences exaggerated a bit. They didn’t always get along as toddlers, particularly when they were tired. But once they grew a bit, became capable of more complex thought, they became a team the same way we were. And holy hell, the world trembled when they joined forces.  
They were both blindingly smart. And Dray was so patient, and could research a topic without getting bored or distracted. And Clare was charming and fearless, and could persuade anyone to do anything for her. From ages seven or eight, they were tearing through Velaris together, going anywhere they wanted, using the whole city as a playground.  
Unlike Clare, Dray got nervous about some things-but neither of them had anything to be truly scared of. They were both completely safe.  
Neither of us had ever met anyone who grew up that way.  
It was a beautiful thing to behold.  
Rhys  
We didn’t intend to teach Clare and Dray to fight, or to lead, while they were children. There was no reason to. (Gods, I can’t believe I get to say that).  
But then, when they were three, they snuck into the armory of the House of Wind and stole a pair of long daggers. They were the size of swords for them, so they hid them under Dray’s bed and fought with each other every day.  
And then we found plans they wrote together, written in crayon, and they made sense.  
And then one time they were playing in the yard and I came out to call them in, and Clare flew upwards and then hurled Dray into my face, and I fell over, and they laughed like there had been a lot of thought going into it, and I knew that I had been wrong.  
There had been too much pressure on me when I was young. But people like us needed to be doing something, always, otherwise we get bored. Maybe not something terrifying or stressful, but something nevertheless.  
Clare couldn’t sleep through the night unless she had tired herself out during the day. Dray became irritable and depressed if he let too much magic build up. We placed a warded stone near both of their beds when they were three and a half, so they could get that magic out. And we started tutoring for both of them, just so that they would be busy. But still, they needed to have more going on.  
That’s when we signed them both up as members of the Velaris Junior Guard.  
There was an Illyrian male named Thomas, younger than me by a century and a half, who moved to Velaris when he became fed up with the culture within the Illyrian camps. He wasn’t on track to become a general or anything of that sort, but he was a competent warrior and known for being a good teacher. When he moved to the city, he started a business teaching extracurricular fighting skills to the children in the city-Illyrians or not.  
He and I became something close to friends-not like the Inner Circle, but we would occasionally have lunch together, or I would come speak to one of his classes. We shared the same mix of respect and disdain for Illyrian culture, similar experiences during our training. He hadn’t been alive for the War, but he had quite the story of escaping the Illyrian camps, of making it to the city. We both had scars.  
We signed Clare and Dray up for a few types of fighting, as well as a tactical class. And instantly they bloomed. Clare slept through the night, and Dray became cheerful most of the time, and they both suddenly and completely shifted to seeming complete, somehow.  
In three or four years, Dray lightened his class load to include only his favorite topics-tactics, long-range weapons, and hand-to-hand. Clare, on the other hand, dove farther in as soon as she was able, and soon was spending at least half of six days each week in the training center. On her day off, she would go flying-sometimes all the way to the Illyrian steps, sometimes carrying Dray to increase her strength. She was a machine.  
It came as no surprise to anyone when she was named commander of the Velaris Junior Guard. That was the most elite squad of minors that Thomas led-a group trained like a real Illyrian unit, who theoretically would help if there was ever an attack on the city. Theoretically, because I had never let them help before, and was never planning to.  
Dray wasn’t a member of the Junior Guard-he preferred to spend his time in other ways. So there were two contenders for the post-Clare and her best friend Vitria, a red-haired Illyrian girl who, besides my children, was by far the strongest recruit of the year. And Clare won, of course.  
Dray spent a lot of time in the library. The priestesses didn’t need much help, but he would still spend time sorting books and dusting for them. Mostly, though, he just read-about anything and everything. He would tell Clare about what he had learned every night, so she got nearly as much out of it-she couldn’t sit still easily enough to enjoy reading much, so she only did it to learn.  
I didn’t put any pressure on them to choose who would be heir, but they both prepared themselves anyway, just with what they enjoyed.  
When I was about fourteen, I had started showing the signs of being the next High Lord-the blooming of power. So when they got to that age, I waited anxiously to see who it would be. Both of them seemed suited to the position, although in different ways. Dray was patient and thoughtful and less stubborn, but Clare was persuasive and confident and enjoyed debating more. I had no real preference for who was chosen-I just hoped they would continue to be a team. It was only together that they had everything necessary to lead a court.  
And then they were both so damn strong.  
Clare’s powers were more unbalanced. Although she could summon at least a little magic from every court, she only had a decent amount of a few-massive Night strength and decent amounts of ice, light, and wind. She could grow claws or light a candle if she wished, but she wasn’t strong in those areas. Dray was less ridiculously strong in any individual area, but he was able to fight with magic from any Court, and he was able to shape-shift well enough to disguise himself (although he couldn’t quite manage all the muscles of wings).  
They both pushed themselves with magic-sparred and practiced and researched every day to get stronger. And they did it with no desperate reason to do so, no threats of torture or slavery looming over them. They turned fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and we still couldn’t tell who was heir, and it didn’t matter.  
I am proud of that-of making a world for them that was so safe, so comfortable. It’s something that I couldn’t even envision when I was Under the Mountain.  
I am proud that they went seventeen years and eight months before facing danger.


	3. Chapter 3

Dray  
We were having lunch out in the Rainbow one day-the whole Inner Circle together. Clare had training before, so she was dressed in her new leathers and she kept complaining about how stiff they were-a problem that garnered her absolutely no sympathy from any of the Illyrians at the table. She slumped over her chair in mock agony and I laughed, watching everyone’s expressions. Aunt Nesta’s face was blank, as usual, but it wasn’t an angry blankness at all. I suspected she was amused, somewhere in there.   
I knew Nesta had reasons far beyond my own for keeping her face blank, but I suspected that in some situations, it might be simple. I wasn’t traumatized like her, but I was shy-unlike my parents, unlike Clare, I sometimes hid my emotions even when I didn’t need to. I only showed them physically when I made a conscious choice to do so.   
I think that Mama and Papa noticed that, and I think it might have helped them understand Nesta and not worry about her. I knew she once had things to come back from, but the guards around her feelings were not all signs that she was still healing. Some, but not all.   
So it was a lovely day, and we were all having a lovely time.   
A perfect moment for Clare and my first experience with everything going to hell.  
Clare had just straightened up, finished with the joke, when we heard a pulse be added to the assembled heartbeats-a strong pulse, and one that seemed to be coming from most of the people at the table. Papa dug through his pocket for a moment before pulling out the source-a dusky, pulsing orange stone. I recognized it as an alert-something had happened within the city. “I’ll go check on it,” Papa said before winnowing away.   
This wasn’t the first time one of them had been called by that stone, so the mood was subdued but not destroyed entirely, our small talk now meant to hide the underlying core of anxiety, the core that would remain until Papa was back.  
And then he was back, and I had never seen him that scared. Clare and I knew about their pasts, and we knew that it couldn’t be the most scared he had ever been. But still.   
“Town house. Everyone,” he told us, and we obeyed without a thought. I winnowed Elain home, and Clare took Nesta. Then we were all standing in the dining room of the town house. Elain and I took seats, but nobody else did-likely too panicked to do so.   
“There was a murder,” Papa began. His voice was steady, but seemed precarious-like the calm in it could crack at any moment. “They caught the one who did it, and he was an outsider, so they called me to do a sweep of the city’s minds and see whether he was acting alone, and…” He stopped talking then, instead opened his mind for us. I entered with the rest of them and saw a pulsing web of anger crisscrossing nearly every street in the city. The thoughts were nearly uniform-a group, a massive one, and spread throughout every corner of Velaris. I looked at the Rainbow and particular and winced. There had been one on our block.   
Gasps made me exit Papa’s mind, and I reentered the world to see shock and fear on the circle’s faces. I was showing it too, I’m sure.   
“Could we take them out all at once?” Mama asked Papa, grasping his hand. He looked at her for a minute, and I could sense them talking between themselves before he reported to the rest of them. “We can,” he said. “It’ll take a few minutes, but it won’t be dangerous if we do it together.”   
Mor gave an audible sigh of relief then. “Then it’s just those few minutes-” she started.   
Rhys yelled and opened his mind again. I fell in and saw sudden chaos falling on the streets.   
We did not have a few minutes. The attack had begun.


	4. Chapter 4

Clare  
I was frozen in fear for only a moment. Dray and I had not been alive when the last attack had occurred. I was a trained fighter, sure, but I had never used my skills in the real world.   
Then I felt a pulse against my skin, and the rest of myself came flooding back to me. It was Thomas, calling the Junior Guard. I ran my mind through the stone and found his, tense and coiled in the training center. I’ll get orders from my parents, I told him, not bothering to wait for an answer as I stood up.   
“What are you doing?” Papa asked.  
“Where do you want the Junior Guard?” I asked in return.  
“Clare-” He drew a breath, and I could see fear in the whites of his eyes. Mama’s too. I would have liked to back down. I would have backed down if I could. But the Guard had been formed for this moment, and they stood a much better chance with my magic.   
“We’ve trained for this, Papa,” I told him. “With them too-” I gestured to Mor, Azriel, and Cassian- “We can protect everyone until you and Mama can get the daemati thing together. Where do you want us?”   
“I hate this, Clare,” Mama said softly.   
“I know,” I replied.   
“The Rainbow,” Papa finally said, his voice low and bitter. “See if you can hold a few buildings to shepherd everyone into.” Mama nodded assent.   
“Dray,” Papa said, and Dray stood up. “Do you want to shelter, or-”   
“I want to help,” Dray answered. His confidence was an act, but his intentions were real.   
Papa shook his head before continuing. “I want you to help guide people into the library. Ask the priestesses first, but they’ll agree to it. And both of you-stay out of close range combat, if you can.”   
We both nodded, and there were shadows in my parent’s eyes as they gave us the orders, but I winnowed away to carry them out.   
Everyone had reached the training center by the time I got there, and almost everyone was still dressed from earlier-a blessing in uncomfortable disguise. I walked through the group to the front of the room where Thomas was, and they went quiet without speaking.   
“This is real,” was the first thing I said. “We’re fighting real enemies. Papa wants the Guard defending the Rainbow. I’ve seen the map of where our enemies are, and I think we should use the Palace of Bone and Salt as shelter for civilians.”   
Thomas nodded, and I turned to him. “Do you want to do groupings, or should I?” I asked.   
“Go ahead,” he said, his voice unusually hard. “Where do you want me?”   
I thought for a moment. Mama and Papa hadn’t said anything about him, but I didn’t want to go back and ask them. “I want you to hold the training center as a shelter over here,” I told him. “I’ll keep a shield over it while we’re fighting. Take three or four Guard members and get people in here.” He nodded and named a few members, who scampered back fairly eagerly, not thrilled to go into the heart of battle.   
I drew a breath, and a shield appeared over the training center.  
“Vitria, take your eleven,” I said, looking at my friend. “There are…” I checked the map in my head. “Six enemies in the Palace of Bone and Salt. I want your group to clear it while we start dealing with the other buildings. Then you’re going to keep a path clear for people to get in, while the rest of us deal with the soldiers.” Vitria and her five saluted.   
I stretched and ran my fingers over the iron staffs holstered on my back. I had a dagger at my hip as well, although I hoped to just use magic.   
“Our home,” I said to the silent group before me.   
“Our home,” they replied as one-even Thomas.   
I grasped Vitria’s hand, and she grasped another. They formed a chain throughout the group, linking us all.   
Then I tugged, hard, and dropped us down in the center of the Rainbow.   
Vitria  
During the summer, there’s a weekly market day in Velaris. All the vendors set up stands outside of their shops, and everyone comes out to browse and shop. It’s loud and chaotic, but I’ve always loved the energy that day has.   
I was trying to envision that energy as we swirled into being in the Rainbow. As the noise and the crowds threatened to overwhelm me, I tried to pretend that it was something good. But as soon as I opened my eyes, I knew there was no way to fake it.   
Sparring doesn’t sound like real fighting. Even with the same weapons, there’s this edge to a battle that you don’t recognize. And the civilians, everywhere, running-and the screams, that vibrate in your blood-  
A hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Clare staring into my eyes.   
“We have to be the strong ones,” she said, her voice shaking.   
“I know,” I replied. I took a deep breath, then turned to the group. “We clear the Palace of Bone and Salt, remember,” I called. “Let’s go!”   
I formed a blue shield around my unit as we ran as one towards the building. I used two Siphons-one on each hand. There were civilians being engaged around us. I wanted to stop, but the other Guard members charged into the thick of it as we passed.  
There was a jagged stream of people rushing out of the palace, all of them shouting and crying and holding each other. “Fan out!” I called as soon as we entered, and the group obeyed, ducking into the various rooms on the sides. I heard the clashes and shouts of conflict begin in one of those rooms-two.   
Magnus and I kept going, into the very back corner of the palace.   
Suddenly, someone came rushing out of the corner.   
We had both been training for years. We knew how to fight off a group, not just one fae. But training, no matter how good, is nothing like the real thing. There is nothing like the fear of someone coming at you, of seeing the intention in their eyes.  
As one, we unsheathed our staffs. We both had swords as well, but the Guard has been trained to avoid lethal force as much as possible-we were children, after all.  
Magnus swing first, low and sharp towards the right. Our adversary moved, avoiding the strongest impact but not the entire strike. He raised his sword to strike-he did not share our qualms about lethal force-and I took the opportunity to strike him twice in the ribs, once with each staff. He bent in pain, and Magnus got the exposed back of his head. One sharp rap, and he was down, but not dead. Just as we had been taught.  
I reached into the bag behind me and grabbed randomly for the start of a chain. Carrying those bags was one of the hardest parts of our training. We were always fighting with weight on our backs. Together, Magnus and I wrapped it around him, securely enough that he wouldn’t be able to get out. There was some kind of charm on those chains that would let the city guard find and imprison everyone later.  
I turned to Magnus. “You alright?” I asked. There wasn’t enough time to go through that moment, and he wasn’t the one I wanted to go through it with, but I wanted to at least check in. This was a momentous occasion.   
“Report!” I called as I ran back. After a moment, the others joined me. Layla was supporting Orion, but he wasn’t unconscious, and everyone else seemed fine. We debriefed and discovered that the building was cleared, but that there were three entrances we hadn’t known about. I set two people at each entrance, to keep the building secure. The other three I took with me, and we rushed back into the fray.   
The square was still in semi-chaos, but was quieter than it had been a moment ago. All around, there were enemy soldiers on the ground-no visible injuries, no lumps or bruises. Just lying there peacefully, as if they were sleeping through the fight.  
I looked up and saw why: Clare, hovering a few feet above the ground. Her jaw was set, her face pale, and there were tendrils of darkness around her body. One by one, she sent them down onto our enemies. One by one they fell, as if they were sleeping.   
She was my best friend, four months younger than me. Sarcastic and bouncy and game for anything I wanted to try. Simultaneously more and less carefree than I was-more because she had unlimited wealth and nearly unlimited power, but less because she had known from a very young age that her parents had faced wicked things, and that if there were wicked things still left to face, she would be the one to do it.  
And now here she was above us. Twenty minutes into the first battle of our lives, and she was no longer that child. Suddenly, she was a god.


	5. Chapter 5

Dray  
We ran along the edges of buildings, down side streets, as far from the noise as we could stay. One of the people following me was sobbing through clenched teeth.  
I would have liked to cry as well, to run to Mama and Papa. But I was able to be here, so I had to be here. Maybe it would have been possible for me to say no, to never enter the battle at all-but it certainly would not be possible to leave, now that I had seen what my city needed from me.  
Finally, we reached the side entrance to the library. Most people didn’t know about this door, hidden in the shadows of the building. But I did, and it let me lead my small group in without marching them through the main streets, past what was undoubtedly carnage.  
“Seven more here,” I called as I walked into the space. It was jarringly quiet, and smelled of old paper, just like always. To be here, in the middle of all that was happening, was half comforting and half strange.  
A priestess walked up to us. “Welcome,” she said, her voice low and hoarse. This one could talk, but with more difficulty than the average fae.  
“These walls have not been breached in a hundred years,” I told them. The number wasn’t incredibly comforting, but it was something to offer. There had been battles-fairly recent ones-where this library had remained a stronghold.  
“Thank you, Prince,” one of the females I had brought said shakily.  
“At your service,” I told her with a small smile. She returned the expression. Jubilance, or even true happiness, was beyond any of us right now. But I was able to feel satisfied, maybe a bit proud. This was the eighth group I had brought in.  
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, most likely,” I said to the priestess, who nodded and then beckoned my group to follow her deeper into the library. Soon, I was alone in the chamber by the door.  
I took a deep breath and then stepped back into the world.  
It felt like it should be raining. There was no fighting in this corner, nothing odd to see-but the additional stimulation of noise and sound, the extra fear pounding through my body-it was like the way rain adds to the things you feel.  
Hurry up, I thought, but didn’t send it to Mama and Papa. Surely, they were going as fast as they could.  
Bracing myself, I sprinted back into the world, and back towards my citizens who needed me.  
Clare  
I could feel Vitria’s eyes on me as I hovered above the square, but I didn’t have time to look over at her. I had to focus my energy on striking the soldiers out with just the right amount of force.  
Granting sleep was a little-known capability of Night Court magic, and one that was difficult to master. Not all of our High Lords throughout history had been able to grasp it, because the lines were so difficult to find-between thirty seconds and thirty years of slumber, even between life and death.  
These soldiers would all be dead soon, though, so it didn’t matter as much how long they slept. I just had to keep them from hurting innocent fae until Mama and Papa could do their part.  
A brief break in the onslaught, with no targets to be seen. I dared to look up, scan around. I could see Cassian and Azriel, hovering as I was except higher, sending bolts of their power down as I was. They were killing already, but I was not.  
Everyone in my house knew that I would have to kill eventually. Most likely, it would be sooner than anyone wanted. But my parents had decided that it would be as late as it could possibly be.  
I had no problem with that limit. There was no way to tell what killing would be like when I hadn’t done it. And I had no desire to end a life before I actually had to.  
Movement down below caught my eye. Another small unit of soldiers had rushed into the square. By this point, though, it was nearly empty of citizens-Vitria’s squad had held the palace firm, and everyone else had interrupted skirmishes and shepherded everyone in. I sent a cloud of magic into the unit, and they tumbled to the ground.  
Another movement, this time from the other side. I turned and readied my hand, taking a breath before I could send the magic out-but this time, they fell to the ground before I did a thing.  
The square went silent. All those soft breaths from those I had put to sleep-gone. All at once.  
It’s over, Papa said in my head.  
I noticed, I replied. Slowly, I descended onto the ground.  
“Guard! It’s over!” I called into the square. It’s done, I sent to Thomas.  
Vitria and Magnus were the first to emerge from the Palace of Bone and Salt. Behind them, the fae of the city followed-slowly, shuffling, clutching each other. But, for the most part, unhurt.  
“That’s all?” Vitria asked. Her face was flushed, her knuckles white from clutching her weapon.  
“We did it,” I answered, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “My parents finished it-but we did this.” I pointed at the crowd that had gathered around us. The Guard looked at what we had done in awe.  
“What now?” Magnus asked. The second-in-command of Vitria’s squad, which was the strongest squad in the Guard, he was also Dray’s best friend-and, I believed, crush.  
“We escort people back to their homes,” I said after a moment of thought. “Anyone that needs medical attention, we take to the healers-they should be ready, or at least preparing. Then we go to the training center, debrief with Thomas.”  
I sent the plan to Thomas, then to my parents. To the latter, I mentioned that I would stop home before the debriefing to check in.  
You all right? suddenly chimed in my head. Dray.  
I’m fine, I told him. Going to take some people home, then meet at the townhouse?  
I’ll do the same, Dray answered.  
I turned back to the group. “Good work, everyone,” I told them. “There was a unit of the adult guard here in the attack twenty-five years ago, and they didn’t do nearly as good a job.”  
“Let’s not do this for another twenty-five years, then,” Vitria said. A laugh escaped me, but felt foreign as soon as it entered the world.  
“Time to bring things back to normal,” I said, and turned to the group of innocents we had saved.


	6. Chapter 6

Feyre  
For a moment, Rhys and I sat together in silence, our hands tightly clenched. It had been twenty-five years since the last attack. They had been about the same in volume, although this one had ended much more quickly and easily.   
This one had been harder, though, because of who was out on the field.   
We heard back from Clare first, after Rhys sent the message out. A wry I noticed were the only words, but she sent more emotion along with it than usual. Exhaustion, anxiety, the endings of rage-all things we recognized. But no pain, and no lingering terror.   
She had been the strongest one on the battlefield, and she had known that the whole time. So she hadn’t been afraid of death, even as she fought. An enviable position to be in.   
Dray came next. I’m alright, he said. Brought fifty people into the library. Have to get them home now.   
He had been a bit more on the outside of the battle. Clare claimed to understand the value in waiting to put herself in danger until she was an adult, but Dray actually understood it. When the battle was guaranteed to be won within half an hour, when he could afford to spare himself that trauma-he would. And Rhys and I were both glad that he had been given that option.  
We winnowed out into the city together. First to the healer’s complex in the center of the city, where a few guards had been stationed. It had not been breached, and they were almost finished preparing for the influx they were now beginning to receive. That influx was present, as always-but it could have been worse.  
After a stop to visit the captain of the guard, who assured us that the losses to our forces were minimal, we returned home. Later-later we would have to make a public appearance, reassure everyone that things were fine. But for now, we could wait for our children to come home.  
The rest of the Inner Circle arrived first. Amren, who had been running evacuations rather than fighting upfront. Mor and Cassian and Az, who had all held huge swaths of the city and were weary as a result, but who had all done much more difficult things in their lives.  
My sisters-Elain, who had helped prepare the healers for the patients they were about to get. She had learned how to fight over the last century-not expertly, like Rhys or Cassian or even me, but well enough to defend herself. But she chose not to participate, to allow the part of herself that cringed away from battle to lead her in situations like this.  
And Nesta, who also did not fight in battles when she could help it, but who dove into the world as soon as the fight was done. To spread the news that it was over to anyone who hadn’t heard, and to gather an overview of the casualties to bring to us.   
She gave us that overview as we waited for Clare and Dray to get back. Slightly lower casualties than last time, due to some streamlining of the evacuation procedures. The Junior Guard had held the Rainbow expertly, with a lower casualty rate than the rest of the city. Even better, they had done it without killing, just as we had hoped.   
Then Dray walked in, sweaty and disheveled but free of wounds. “I only ran into two soldiers,” he told us before beelining for the food. Once he had something to eat in his hands, he came to standing still between Nesta and Azriel, in a place where he could watch the door for his sister.   
Clare came in a moment later, and hugged both of us tightly. We both knew that she was doing it to bring herself out of the battle and back into reality-it was something everyone in the Circle had done many times. It made me want to cry, honestly, to see my daughter take that habit up.  
We all crowded around the small island in the kitchen and ate together, Clare and Dray acting as one entity as they stood together in the back of the crowd.   
After we ate, Rhys and Mor went back out into the streets and formed a loose plan for when repairs would start. They came back after only a few minutes and assigned each of us to help in a certain area: Elain in the city gardens, Clare and Dray and I in places with damage that needed our magic to fix.  
Rhys, along with most of the court, then went upstairs to bathe and change clothes. Nesta and Cassian and I stayed downstairs, along with Clare and Dray. Nesta, Cassian, and Clare had not yet settled themselves enough to move on. Dray and I simply wanted to watch the others and remind ourselves that they were still safe.  
Clare had been walking around the kitchen, gnawing on a slice of bread. She then looked out the window and paused. “Mama,” she said suddenly, pointing. I whirled quickly, alert for danger, but found that she was simply pointing at Thomas, who was walking by our house.   
“I’m going to go talk to him,” she said, heading for the door. I nodded as she left.   
I watched her as she walked down the path from our front door and met Thomas in front of our house. I didn’t make an effort to hear what they were saying.   
She grasped one of his hands with both of hers. He put his other hand on her shoulder.  
Then his face shifted. Before she could react, before she could realize things had changed, he struck her hard across the face. He caught her in his arms as she fell unconscious.  
I did not look away, but a moment later they were gone.   
My first instinct was to look down, look away. That did not just happen. I did not just see that.   
And then, just as abruptly as the exit, I was running-running like I had not run since the war, pulling the door off one of its hinges as I threw it opened and sprinted into the street. But so, so quickly, I was standing right where she had been. Only I was the one standing there, and she was not.   
Dray was a split second behind me. “What happened?” he asked.  
“I don’t know,” I said, breathing hard. “I don’t know what happened.”  
Then it hit me.   
Rhysand heard my scream, and he was there instantly, half-dressed and with panic in his eyes. He scanned me and then pressed me to him, reassuring himself that I was not injured as I screamed and sobbed into his bare chest, my eyes wide open.  
He looked at Dray, who was in shock, and then back at the house, where Nesta and Cassian were just exiting, pale-faced. “Where’s Clare?” he asked as he realized who was missing. I just sobbed harder, pressing myself into him, trying to make the world outside disappear.   
Dray came to us then, and Rhys put an arm around him and pulled him into our circle just as the situation registered in his own mind. Then suddenly Cassian was behind him, holding him up, and Nesta was on my left. Mor and Az and Amren and Elain joined us, and in hushed whispers under mine and Rhys’s sobs learned what had happened and joined the circle, and eventually everyone was pressed around Rhys and Dray and I as we shattered, and still we were cold and empty.


	7. Chapter 7

Rhys   
It was probably hours later when we were all sitting around the dining room table, mine and Feyre’s chairs pressed together into one. Dray had separated from us and was sitting alone, his face white and his eyes unfocused. It was hard to tell what was happening in his mind, and his shields were up as strongly as I had ever seen them. I could have broken them, of course, but he deserved privacy.   
Feyre told us all what had happened, and I pulled her closer to me with every sentence, trying to shield her from the memory.   
“Was it really Thomas? Or was it someone else pretending?” Cassian asked, leaning forward with his fists clenched.   
“I don’t know,” Feyre said quietly. “His face… it changed somehow, right before they left. But it could have just been him dropping the act. It’s hard to tell.”   
“What can we do to find her?” Elain asked, her eyes wide and frightened. I saw Azriel move a hair closer to her from where he was standing against the wall, but she did not register the movement.   
“We’ll scan the spot where she left,” Mor told the group. “There are traces left when you winnow.” Amren and I both nodded in agreement.   
“We should question Thomas as well,” Azriel said, quiet as always. The shadows around him were thicker than usual, preparing for what was bound to be a challenging mission. I agreed. I had always trusted Thomas, had doubted that there would be another Illyrian or half-Illyrian with such strong magic. But I had never looked at him all that closely. I could have been wrong.  
“Elain might be able to tell,” Dray said.   
“What?” Nesta asked, instantly protective of her. Dray seemed to shrink back. Normally, he wouldn’t have been the least intimidated by that, and I wanted to cry anew. From Feyre’s tense posture as she leaned against me, I knew she felt the same.  
“I don’t know that much about seers,” Dray said hesitantly. “But… is it possible that she could help read the traces? Or something of the sort?”  
He turned to me, and I turned to Amren, watching as she turned it over in her mind. “Perhaps,” she said at last. Her voice was mostly the same, enough so that I doubted Nesta, Elain, or Lucien would notice a difference, but the original Circle could see the extra edge in it. She was scared, then. Oddly enough, I was grateful to her in that moment, for sharing that fear with me.   
“Azriel might help as well,” she added. “It’s hard to tell what powers will be the most useful.”   
“Why don’t we go with Amren and Mor, then?” Azriel suggested, pointing to himself and Elain, who looked nervous at being part of that group. Nesta looked like she was going to contradict him, but after a breath she said nothing.  
“Sounds good,” I told him, trying to keep my voice steady. “You who are left… we need to make sure everyone whose homes were destroyed has somewhere to sleep. And we don’t have to rebuild now, but we need a plan for it.”   
“Why don’t we go and talk to Thomas?” Feyre suggested, looking up at me. I nodded.   
“Afterwards we can help rebuild-if we’re up to it,” I added, and she agreed softly. It was torturous to make this plan where we were not the ones going to save Clare, but she was in capable hands, and the city desperately needed us.  
“What about me?” Dray asked.   
“You do what you need, Dray,” Nesta-Nesta-told him.   
He nodded quietly. “I’m going to go upstairs,” he told us. “I’ll come help rebuild in a bit.”   
“Go ahead,” Feyre said. We all watched him leave the room, then we began shuffling out one by one. Nesta came up to the both of us then, put one slender hand on each of our arms.   
“She isn’t dead,” she said, firm and grave. “You would know if she was.” Then she swept out of the room with Cassian.   
Feyre and I winnowed right to the training center, neither of us ready to talk to the citizens of the city. We walked in to see Thomas talking to the Guard, dressed in their leathers, blood dripping off a few.   
“You can’t anticipate how you’ll react to battle until you’re in the thick of it,” he told them. “All you can do-” Then he looked up and stood as he saw us. “High Lord, High Lady,” he greeted us. The little warriors spun to see us, a few gaping at our presence, our obvious weariness. I leaned into Feyre, suddenly tired at the sight of all these fighters who had been serving under her just a few hours ago. Feyre returned the motion. “We are all immeasurably grateful to the both of you,” Thomas told us, walking over. “And to Lady Clare, who is an exceptional commander. Where is she, by the way?”   
“That’s what we’re here to talk to you about,” Feyre told him.   
“Privately,” I added.   
Thomas paled, then turned to the Guard. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he told them, and followed us out of the room.”  
“Clare’s been kidnapped,” I told him as soon as we were out of earshot of the Guard, needing to get it out of my throat as fast as possible. Thomas clapped a hand over his mouth.   
“There’s more,” Feyre said, sighing. She didn’t want to say this, didn’t want to have to deal with what might happen. But she did anyway, because she is brave.  
“I saw it happen, and the one who took her-Thomas, it was you.”  
Thomas stepped back, in shock. “What do I need to do to prove it wasn’t?” he asked, fast and panicked.  
“I can look in your mind,” I told him.   
“Go,” he said, just as quickly, just as scared. I nodded and dove in.   
He was not a daemati. His mind was jumbled and open and panicked, thoughts swirling around. The panic around Clare’s disappearance was deep, stronger than I had expected. I saw the moment when she had been taken, saw that he had been in the hospital with an injured Guard member. I looked around for walls, for places he could be hiding a true memory. There were none.   
I exited suddenly, took a deep breath to settle myself. “You didn’t do it,” I said, telling Feyre and him what I had found. “Sorry for having to check.”   
“Don’t apologize,” Thomas said. “Do what you have to do. Bring her back.”   
“We will,” Feyre reassured him. How she had the strength to say that, I do not know. “Part of our Inner Circle is already working on it,” she added.   
Thomas nodded, his eyes dulled. “I suppose I should get back to the Guard,” he murmured. “Should I tell them?” We thought for a moment.   
“Sure,” I finally said. Feyre nodded in agreement. “But… ask them to keep it in the group. Just for a day or two,” I added hastily, as I could see Thomas’s retort. I cannot ask them to lie. Thomas was not young, but he had never been forced to fight with wicked methods. In that moment, I hoped he never would. That was the kind of teaching I wanted for my daughter, for all the future warriors of Velaris.  
“We’ll have to make it public eventually,” I amended. “But if she gets back quickly, I don’t want to have caused a panic for nothing.” Thomas nodded, tight-lipped. He thanked us and then went back in to where the Guard was waiting.   
Feyre and I stood there for a moment and watched him tell them, watched them gasp and sob and fall-Charlotte and Vitria especially, the leaders under Clare, the ones who would now carry the group if-  
I watched Vitria especially. Although the two were friends, Clare knew that Vitria wished she had Clare’s position.  
But she did not want it like this.  
Those sick thoughts continued to Dray. I had never known if he wanted to be High Lord-had gotten the impression that he was not sure himself.   
It might have been a happy moment for him, if he was chosen. But it could not be now-  
I choked out a sob, and Feyre wrapped her arm around me. “She will come back,” she whispered fiercely. “We do not have to believe otherwise.”   
It was hard to convince myself of that, but she was right. Clare was not dead, and she was stronger than anyone outside Velaris would expect. We did not have to give up. We did not have to give those thoughts anything now.  
I gestured out of the training center. “Let’s fix what we can,” I said.   
Dray  
I could not accept that she was gone.   
We had been a pair our whole lives. We had worked as one unit on so many things.   
The hardest part was that a situation like this was the exact kind where we would normally band together. But that was not an option now, and I was stranded without my other piece.   
I bathed and dressed in soft clothes.   
Where are you? I sent into her mind.   
I walked out onto the balcony and looked out at the city, the destruction all around.  
Trade you, I told her. I save you, and you save me. Save me from having to do this alone.  
I winnowed onto the top of a building, central to the chaos. I could not bear to talk to anyone right then, but I started whirling buildings back into place.   
Save me save me save me, I begged her as I healed the city.


	8. Chapter 8

Clare  
I woke up suddenly, and my jaw hurt.  
I was in a small cottage, lying on a wooden floor. My entire body ached a little-from the battle, I realized. I was still drained.   
Why was I here, then?  
Then the events immediately leading up to this returned to me. I shot up suddenly, then felt a sudden tug on my wrists. I looked down at them and saw thick iron shackles. I was chained here, for some reason I didn’t understand.   
It had been Thomas, I recalled, except not. I had realized this just before I was knocked out-the way he looked at me had been different. At first, I had chalked it up to just the exhaustion after the battle. But it had started to feel wrong after a moment, too far from normal.  
Then he had hit me, and I had known for sure.   
Now I was here, and I was-I gave the chains a few experimental yanks. Yes, I was trapped, without the magic or the strength left to get myself out of this.  
If I had one of those things, I would not have been scared. But I was terrified in that moment, because I was not used to being helpless.   
A male walked in then, with golden hair and flat, pale eyes. He grinned at me, sending a shiver through my body.  
“What the hell is going on?” I asked, my voice rough, trying to sound frightening. He only smirked and continued crossing the room, although I noticed he stayed out of my range, conscious of the threat I posed.  
“Your family will be destroyed,” he told me, and ice struck my soul. I had not thought of anyone yet-how scared they must be. Mama, Papa, Dray-Dray, who I would have worked with and balanced if it had been anyone else, who would have balanced me. We were not helpless separately, but we were off balance.   
“Yes, your family,” the male continued, enjoying my suffering, “and… other things.”   
Just then, I heard a voice in my head. Dray. Please be safe, he said.  
I found a tiny well of power I hadn’t felt before to respond. Maybe not safe, I told him, but not hurt. I’m-  
I didn’t get to finish that sentence, because the male was suddenly in my vicinity. “I can’t have you recover and escape, now, can I?“ he said, his voice sharp and rattling within me.   
Then, in one smooth motion, he unsheathed a wicked rapier and slashed into my side.   
I screamed then. Pain like I had never felt, pain that took all sense of self with it.   
Clare! I heard in my head, overlapping from three separate voices. Then the pain took my consciousness as well.   
Feyre  
I fell to my knees as I felt the slice, wicked and excruciating and separated from me. I screamed as I felt it. Ringing in my ears was another scream in another place-coming from my daughter. That sound had been forced out of her mouth.   
Rhys joined me a moment later, both of us bowed by the phantom wound, destroyed far more than we would be by the same wound on ourselves. I don’t know how we left that, but somehow we then winnowed together, our magic mixing as the world exploded in my eyes. We swirled onto the walk in front of the town house, and the group there turned to greet us. Dray was already there, and rushed to us. He was sobbing just as hard as we were, and the entity of two just as easily became three, and just like that we were wrecked on the ground again.   
I don’t know how long it took them to get our attention. I expect it was a while. All I know is that at some point, Elain wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and I eventually noticed the new comfort and turned to her. Mor had gotten Rhys’s attention as well, and we rose at the time.  
“How close are you?” Rhys asked, his voice hoarse and guttural.   
“Closer,” Amren replied. “By the morning, I would guess.” Rhys nodded.   
“How can we help?” I asked, moving closer.   
“You can’t,” Amren said. Rhys shot her a glare, which she took without caring, knowing how poorly he was functioning at the moment. “We have all the power we need here, Feyre,” she said to me, uncharacteristically gentle. “If there’s any way for you to speed it up, we will let you know.”   
“The best thing you can do for her right now,” Mor said, gripping Rhys’s hand to make sure he heard, “is heal yourselves. Make sure you can be strong for her when she returns-because she will be scared, Rhys. She will need you solid.”   
“I need her here,” Rhys whispered, pressing his face into my shoulder. I nodded. There was nothing else to say.   
“She’s still not dead,” Dray told us as we stumbled into the house. I stopped abruptly-he was right. We would feel that.   
“Thank you, Dray,” I whispered, hugging him close to me. I could feel his mind working-he was sending messages, although I didn’t snoop on the specifics. And I could feel his body shaking. My son, who was so strong alone but so much stronger with Clare by his side.  
We ended up in Clare’s chambers, the three of us pressed together on her heavily cushioned velvet sofa, leaning on each other.   
That whole night, we stayed that way, not quite awake or asleep, keeping ourselves existent. Occasionally one of us would sob and then be taken in by the others, but for the most part we just lay together, reminding ourselves that three of us were still here, and four of us were still alive.   
We announced that fact every ten minutes or so. And every time, it brought relief.   
Dray  
Let me save you, or save yourself. Whatever you prefer.  
Save me save me save me.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! Thanks so much for reading-I hope you're enjoying the story so far!  
> Shameless plug: I am in the process of editing my own novel. If you're interested in reading more of my stuff, or learning about my writing process, follow me on Instagram at @alicewritesthings  
> Thanks!

Clare  
When I woke up, I was stiff and sore enough that I knew it had been a while. I tried to sit up, but two things stopped me.  
The first was the shackles. I was on something soft now, but I was still trapped.  
And the second was the wound. The memory of getting it was hazy, but the feeling was sharp and robbed me of my breath.   
I lay back down and silently sobbed. It hurt so badly, and I was so scared. Never before had I been this alone.  
Just then, I felt a stroke against my mind-Mama, probably checking to make sure I was alive. I sobbed harder then, because I wanted to tell her that I was alive and sane but that I desperately needed help. But I could not. Only a tiny amount of my power had returned, probably because of the wound, and I needed to save it.  
Then a light entered the tent, carried by a tense-looking human male. A human female followed him.   
I hadn’t looked at my surroundings before, but I looked now-and they dulled my fear a tiny bit. It was a healer’s tent, similar to the ones in Illyrian camps I had visited. I could smell blood-my blood-on some of the instruments. And as I watched the male move around the tent, I knew it was his space.  
When I had arrived here, I had been prone and injured-an injury that could likely have killed me without his intervention. He had chosen to save me. That made me think that maybe-just maybe-he was not going to hurt me now.  
Because he could. And even though I no longer thought he was about to, it was still terrifying that he could, because that was not normal.   
I wanted Papa to protect me. I wanted to hide behind him. I didn’t want to handle anything by myself.   
But I would have to.  
“Thank you for saving me,” I said, my voice hoarse.   
He passed me a glass of water. “You needed it,” he answered, and sat, the woman next to him. “What’s your name?“ she asked me.   
“Clare,” I told her, and she breathed in sharply, suddenly tense. “What?” I asked, although I didn’t have the energy to look concerned.   
The man sighed. “There was a girl from here, generations ago. She was taken by Fae.” Fae-not your kind. Not hateful, although separated and wary.   
“Clare Beddor?” I asked. They both nodded. “She was my namesake,” I told them, and the woman blinked in surprise. “My parents… they had no intention of hurting her, but it was their actions that led to her being taken. They named me that as… as a sort of memorial to her.”   
“Your parents cared that much about a human? Who-”   
“The Archeron sisters,” the woman interrupted.   
I nodded in agreement. “My father felt just as much remorse-but yes, Feyre is my mother.”  
“We need to ask her about-” the woman whispered, then realized I could probably hear.   
“Ask away,” I told them, laying my head back down on the pillow.   
“Okay, I’m just going to be blunt,” the man said. “Did you attack our village earlier?”  
I sat up quickly, shocked-then cried out, the pain overwhelming me again. The man rushed over and grabbed my shoulders, holding me up until it subsided a bit.   
“No,” I eventually told him, with as much force as I could muster. He seemed to believe me, because he stepped back after making sure I wasn’t going to fall over. “What happened to your village?” I asked as he sat back down.  
“Something flew over us… set fires, knocked things down. Then you were found.”   
“I was framed,” I confirmed, sitting back.   
“Not well,” the woman said. “You had a mortal wound-only someone idiotic would assume you had done it.”   
“They probably expected humans to be that stupid,” I told her. “We beat the king of Hybern, but we didn’t kill every Fae that supported him.”  
I felt for my hip, where I normally kept my money pouch. But I didn’t carry it in my fighting leathers. “I will return in a few months and give you money for damages,” I told them.   
“You don’t have to-” the woman started.   
“I know,” I said. “But I’m very wealthy.” The man laughed a little at that, and I tiredly grinned back at him.   
Elain   
Azriel held my hand as I thrashed, my mind flying out of my head and across the land. “Throw,” he said in my ear, his voice low and sharp. I reacted, jerking my arm without much control, splaying my hand out-  
Suddenly I was back in my chair in the dining room, my hand laid out on the table. Breathing hard, I withdrew my hand to find the bones marking a point, just as I had intended.   
“Shit,” Amren whispered as she saw where it was. I had never seen her pale as she was then.   
Azriel walked around and woke Mor, who had been dozing in her chair. We had taken turns getting a bit of sleep-only Amren had not yet rested, although she had left for a few minutes to eat. “We found it,” he told her, and she immediately stood up, pacing a bit to wake herself up.   
I left the room and walked upstairs, a bit disoriented. It was almost four in the morning, and I had been working for all but an hour since the previous afternoon. Time had removed itself from the situation entirely.   
I scented Feyre in Clare’s chambers and entered them to find my sister with Rhysand and Dray, the three of them huddled together on Clare’s velvet couch. Feyre was half-asleep, but raised her head as I entered.   
“We found her,” I said.   
Feyre jumped up first, followed closely by the other two, and threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispered. Rhys added to the sentiment. Dray hung back, but his eyes were shining.  
We hurried down the stairs and into the dining room, where Amren and Azriel had readied themselves for combat. Mor entered a moment later with weapons for Rhys and Feyre. Dray reached for a dagger, and Rhys looked at him almost in disbelief.   
“If there’s fighting, I’ll winnow back here,” Dray told him, not backing down. Eventually Rhys nodded, and the three of them suited up together.   
“Where are we going?” Rhys asked as we all gathered around the table.   
His face went pale as he looked at the map.   
I put a hand on Feyre´s shoulder as she looked as well, as she grasped Rhys´s hand and squeezed it tightly, as he choked out a sob and then hardened his face into stone.   
He grasped my hand gently. “You'll need to guide me as we winnow,” he told me. I nodded, looking at the map again, trying to burn the location into my mind. Azriel, Mor, and Feyre put their hands on my arms and shoulders as well.   
“Let’s go,” Feyre said, her voice sounding different than I had ever heard it. Maybe it had been worse when Rhysand was dead, maybe not. Regardless, this was a new kind of pain.   
Azriel counted down, and their powers blended around me. I tried my best to put the essence of our destination into the swirl, to direct it as we traveled faster than I could comprehend, as we swirled through being, until our feet hit stone. As I composed myself from the journey, I watched Rhys and Feyre join as one, protecting each other from our setting.  
I looked around at our surroundings-all stone and shadows, never quite enough light.   
We had arrived Under the Mountain.


	10. Chapter 10

Azriel  
I felt sick just looking at the place.   
Rhysand had spent fifty years here, thinking he would never see Velaris again-  
I shut those thoughts out. Later-later I would think about that, for the thousandth time let myself be awed by the sacrifices my High Lord and Lady had made. But for now, I had to find their daughter.   
I sent shadows out, searching into the blackness around us. I felt a flicker of confirmation-a trail, and not a winnowing one-a real one. “This way,” I told them, and started walking fast down a dark path. Rhys’s breath hitched as he saw the direction.   
“Is this-” I heard Feyre asked. “It’s not the only room on this hall,” Rhys said, talking as much to himself as to us.  
The trail continued until it entered a room to the left of us. “Here,” I said, turning around. Rhys turned away, visibly shaking. This was it, then. I heard a voice in my head-Feyre, confirming it without saying the words out loud.   
Amarantha’s bedchamber.   
Half my instincts were screaming at me to leave this place, to get him out. But there was a second voice, just as strong, telling me to continue. Continue, and save the girl who was in there, who was injured and needed help just as much as Rhys.   
Mor stepped forward, Amren soon after her. “We’ll go,” Mor told Rhys and Feyre. “Avoid you having to go in, if possible.” I could see the shame in Rhys’s eyes as he nodded, and I could feel Feyre’s mind trying to convince him that there was no shame in that action. Amren nodded to me, and I opened the door.  
It was dark, and the scent was strong. Dimly, I could see a small mound in the center of the room. All other furniture had been removed. I stepped forward, looking closer. The scent was from the mound, and I knelt down to see it more clearly, see what it was.  
The top of Clare’s fighting leathers.   
“She’s not here,” I said quietly as I stood back up, disappointment building in the back of my throat.   
Elain’s breath hitched. “I was-”   
“You weren’t wrong,” I reassured her. “She was here-but she left.”   
Elain nodded. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Feyre and Rhys. But I could see it in her eyes that although she wished she had been able to help, she did not blame herself for it the way either of them would.   
Elain had broken, but it had been a clean break-a single cleaving of the world in two.   
Feyre and Rhys had broken over months and years. They had more shards to remove.   
I knelt to grab the leathers as Amren and Mor walked out of the chamber, already considering what the next move would be. My fingers reached around them-and I felt something spark.   
I froze.   
From deep within the bundle, strands of magic reached out, climbing across the room and towards the walls. They wrapped around the stone, and it started to thrum, a low and eerie sound. Everyone heard it-everyone turned, and Mor and Rhys dropped everything and ran for me, so fast they blurred in my vision.   
But they slammed into a wall-a wall of magic that had appeared, that sectioned me off from the rest of the group. Icy cold fear gripped me as I tried to winnow-but even in the shadows, that wall remained.  
I could hear the others through the wall, although they were a bit muffled. “Are you alright?” Rhys asked, his eyes wild and panicked. Seeing me trapped in this room… I knew that was one of his nightmares.   
“I’m not hurt,” I told him. “But I can’t winnow out.”   
“Rhys,” Amren said, pointing towards the floor. Rhys swore as he saw what she was pointing to, and I looked as well.   
A stone-a set of wards that had spread across the floor.   
A complex, evil trap, months in the making.   
“Try to use your powers,” Feyre suggested. I did, trying to make the shadows creep along the wall, search for weak spots.   
None appeared.   
“It’ll take a few hours to break those wards,” Amren said.   
“Can I-” Feyre started.   
“I doubt it,” Amren told her. “These can be keyed against certain people, and they’ve been keyed against you. All of us, actually.”  
“Against Clare?” Dray asked, his voice soft.   
Amren looked for a moment. “No,” she said, a bit surprised. “Not Clare.”   
“It’s related, then,” Mor said as she paced back and forth. They all looked strange through the rose tint of the magic.   
“They knew she wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t have left her out otherwise,” Rhys agreed. Dray was silent again, as he had been for most of this.   
“I guess I’ll wait for Amren to break them, then?” I suggested, sitting down against the wall.   
Amren nodded. “These are complex, but they aren’t unbreakable. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t realize their time would be limited.”   
“What if they did?” Elain breathed. She looked beautiful and wild-eyed and scared. “What if they only need limited time?”   
As if on cue, someone winnowed into my prison.   
Dray  
A golden-haired male with small, pale blue eyes. He wore a bronze chestplate over casual clothes, a smirk on his lips.   
Before Azriel could react, use the fighting abilities that had not been stifled by the wards, the male threw out a hand. Azriel froze, trapped by some magic we could not see.   
Mor yelled, pounded on the wards with her fists, poured her power into them. Rhys stepped forward as well, and Feyre, and Elain whispered to the wards, trying to convince them to change sides. But they were stubborn and did not yield.   
“The Night Court,” the male said thoughtfully. Azriel gritted his teeth as he strained to escape the magic. He could break it with his own power-he could winnow out, find a way. But now-now he was prone.   
“He’s not in pain,” the male told us, and a bit of relief flickered in everyone’s eyes, but they didn’t stop trying to break the wards. Amren was on the floor, tracing patterns as fast as she could, but it would not be fast enough, would not, as the male pulled a dagger out of his belt-  
“No!” Rhys yelled, pouring his magic into the wards, begging them. They did not budge.  
I took everything in, took the whole situation, and forced it into Clare’s mind-our location, the whole story, everything. Save us, I begged her.   
Clare  
My fists clenched as the vision poured into my head, filling my mind.   
Save us, Dray said.   
I stood up as quickly as I could, suddenly able to ignore more pain than before. My belt of knives was on a table, and I strapped it on, pulling out a dagger and settling it in one hand.   
Hearing the disruption, the man rushed into the tent. He flinched when he saw the knife. “I have to go,” I said. “Someone will die if I don’t.”   
“See a healer afterwards,” he said, not questioning it.   
I nodded. “Thank you..” The words felt too small.   
“My pleasure,” he replied, holding the flap of the tent open for me.  
I walked steadily, getting used to the throb of the wound. The man watched me as I readied myself, tugged on whatever scraps of power had returned to me-  
And vanished, suddenly and entirely, into the air.


	11. Chapter 11

Feyre  
    I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, as the male held the dagger up, making sure we were watching, as Azriel closed his eyes, readying himself for the blow- and then another figure entered.   
    They were wearing leather pants and a loose gray tunic. I couldn’t get a good look at their face as they whirled into existence behind the male and, without hesitation, plunged a dagger into his heart.   
    The male gasped, stumbling back. Azriel dropped to his knees, breathing heavily. The new figure pulled the dagger out of the attacker’s body and sheathed it, then went for Azriel-put a hand on his shoulder, and twisted him out of being. A moment later, the two reappeared in the hall. The group of us stumbled out.  
    Then the figure turned, and it was Clare.  
    The tunic fit her poorly, and there were spots of blood soaking through on one side of her ribs-right where we had felt the slice earlier. Her face was pale, and she stumbled back to lean against the wall, but she was alive, and she was smiling at us-at Dray, who was both crying and smiling back at her. As if he had seen this coming.   
“There you go,” she told him, and laughed-laughed, the sound ringing off the walls, a sound that had never been heard here before.   
    Then Rhys broke free from his stupor and ran for her, and as the two collided I felt the mountain shake with the relief he felt-the relief I felt as well.   
    I joined them a moment later, stroked Clare’s head and grasped her hand. “What-” I started to ask.   
“Later,” she said, her voice soft. I nodded and rested my head on hers. It did not matter right now where she had gone. All I needed to know was that she had come back.  
    She did not let go of Rhys’s arm, let it steady her as she stumbled forward. But it was her walking-walking towards the group, walking towards Azriel, who looked up at her with something like awe.   
“Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse.   
“Of course,” Clare replied. Then she let go of Rhys’s arm, stumbled a few steps on her own until she reached Dray, who enveloped her and held her up in a similar fashion.   
    “How did you-” Mor started.   
“I’ve been sending thoughts to her since she left,” Dray said softly, not taking his eyes off Clare. “I don’t know, I just-they must have expected her to be dead, or they would have keyed the wards against her. And she wasn’t dead, and I-I knew we had to break the system. Do something they hadn’t planned for. She was all I could think of.”   
    Clare looked around us. There was gratitude in her eyes, but she didn’t say thank you out loud. She knew we were going to come for her.   
    But her eyes then shut, she hissed and her breath became shallow, and for the hundredth time today my blood froze. “Healers,” Dray barked, not bothering to say anything else before he left, scooping her up in his arms as he twisted away.   
Rhys nodded and grabbed my hand, looked at our friends as they winnowed out in pairs. We left too.  
    As we were whirling through the darkness, I sent a thought into Rhys’s mind. She lived.   
    She laughed, he sent back, that relief still in his voice, and I knew what he meant. After Under the Mountain, I had not laughed-not until Starfall. I had lost that jubilance in the darkness.  
    Clare had not. She was not broken the way we had been.


	12. Chapter 12

Dray  
    I winnowed us right into the hospital, where I knew Marja would be. She was sitting down, a rare pause in the string of injuries, but she stood up as I appeared, holding Clare up. “Oh, thank the gods,” she said as she saw my sister, walking to us and taking Clare from my arms. I stood awkwardly, not sure how to move now that I was not supporting her. I realized that Mama and Papa had appeared behind me.   
“How did you know she was gone?” Papa asked, watching Marja as she lay Clare on a cot and pulled her shirt off, exposing blood-soaked bandages along her side.   
“Every member of the Junior Guard’s been here at some point,” she said, efficiently removing the bandages. “They’re teenage females. Even when they’re injured, they don’t stop talking.”  
I sucked in a breath as I saw the wound. Neither Clare nor I had ever been injured that badly before.   
Marja grabbed a cloth and a bowl of water and started cleaning it gently. “Whoever treated this before… they were competent, but they didn’t use magic.” I was confused by that. I didn’t know of anyone who wouldn’t use magic to help her. “She’s lucky regardless,” Marja continued. With the blood removed, I could see that the wound was deep but clean-the blade had been sharp, and she had not been infected. “Without those bandages, and the stitches-damn. She would be dead.”   
    She put her fingers on the wound then, focused on it. I watched with a bit of awe as light entered Clare’s body, and the wound closed bit by bit. Marja was tired, I could see-she had been working for a while. But she was not drained all the way, and the work was slow but steady.   
“Does she need-would my blood help?” Mama asked, and I started. I had forgotten about the gifts in her blood.   
“No,” Marja said, pausing her work to look up at Mama. “It’s not a poison, so it wouldn’t make much difference. And honestly, I would have preferred it if you all would have rested, instead of fixing the whole city and then going on a damn crusade-”  
    “We didn’t have a choice,” Papa said.   
“I know you didn’t,” Marja replied. “I just wish the circumstances had been different, that’s all.” She turned back to her work then, and we watched as bit by bit, Clare’s body was put back together.   
    “Thank you,” Papa eventually said. It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me.   
“For what?” I asked.   
“For figuring out how to save Az,” Mama said, and Rhys nodded.   
“Any time,” I said, and Mama laughed a little.   
    Marja finished and turned to us. “She’ll be fine,” she said, grinning. “Recovery will be a few months, but… she will recover. And she can go home in a few hours, rest there.”   
“Thank you,” Papa said to her, and she dipped her head.   
“My pleasure, Rhysand,” she told him.  
    “I’m going to go back home,” I said to the group. “I’ll bring some clothes over for her, and I’ll make sure her room’s straightened up for when she gets back.” Mama nodded, and I winnowed out and into the house.   
    “How is she?” Amren asked as soon as I arrived.   
“She’ll be fine, eventually,” I said. Suddenly I was tired-more tired than I had been during any of it. Amren nodded and read my face.   
“Go to bed, Dray,” she told me with much more gentleness than usual.   
“I will,” I told her, heading up the stairs.   
    I went to Clare’s room instead of mine and just stood there for a moment, breathing in her scent, looking at this place that she would be coming back to.   
Thomas  
    I had not calmed since the battle, which was strange. Normally, I would have mostly recovered by the next day. I had slept through part of the night, but had woken up in the early morning feeling so tense and panicked that I had to get up and walk around.   
    It was about the Guard, I decided. They had never battled that way before, and although they had lived, they had not been unscathed. Those children had been scarred, and I had something to do with it, and I had not quite reconciled that with myself.   
    So I decided to go to the hospital, check on the ones who were injured. I walked through the dark streets, past the tents that had been set up for the newly homeless, past the buildings that had been ruined and the buildings the High Family had fixed.   
    I reached the hospital and went in. The attendant at the front was drowsy as she waved me up. There were more beds set up than usual, but it was peaceful and still at this time of night.  
    I entered the wing where the Guard was. The healer on duty was asleep at her desk, catching a few hours before the morning and the discharging began. I walked by without disturbing her.   
    There were two figures already standing in the wing. They turned as I entered, and I saw that it was Feyre and Rhysand. My heart jumped in my chest with sudden hope. “Is-” I asked, my voice suddenly having a hard time coming out. Rhysand gestured to a cot, and I turned to see.  
    And there she was, sleeping deeply. I could almost sense her drain from here-how she must have fought, what she must have gone through even after the battle was over.  
    I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, as I looked at her.   
    Suddenly two words echoed in my head, overwhelming my thoughts.   
    My mate.


	13. Chapter 13

Rhys  
He said the words out loud.   
And such emptiness filled my head at those words-not rage, not fear, just emptiness as I took them in. That this male-and my daughter-were linked.   
Thomas turned to me, and his eyes were panicked and nervous as he looked at Feyre and I.   
“It’s not a guarantee of anything,” Feyre warned him, her voice flat.   
Are you- I asked.  
Just surprised, she told me.   
“I wouldn’t take it to be,” Thomas said, tripping over his words. I had never seen him so on edge-but then again, I had been on edge when I returned from Under the Mountain. Had been unhinged. “I would never press her for anything-”  
“Thomas,” I said, and he froze. I took a breath before speaking.  
“You probably know how protective I am of her-of both of them.” He nodded. “They are targets-they are so strong, and they have that power resting on their shoulders. I protect them because I am scared for them. I’m scared of them being hurt-” I gestured to Clare in the cot. “And I’m scared of them having to see things and do things that will scar them. Clare stabbed someone through the heart today to save my spymaster.” Thomas looked at her with something like awe in his eyes. He didn’t see my smile, or Feyre’s.   
“What I am not afraid of,” I said, and Thomas turned back around, “is my daughter falling in love. Especially if she falls in love with a male I have trusted for decades.” Thomas’s shoulders shook a bit, but his eyes remained clear as they met mine. “Clare can manage her own heart,” I said. “And if she chooses you, I would have no problem with that.”   
“Thank you,” Thomas said.   
“Of course,” Feyre told him.  
“Don’t tell her,” he then said, and Feyre looked at me with some type of alarm in her eyes. I was concerned as well, suddenly-Thomas and Clare did not have the things blocking them from honesty that we had gone through. Thomas should not make the mistake I had made, when he had no reason to.   
“She’ll be back to training soon, even if she’s just watching,” Thomas amended. “And she might feel it herself. If she doesn’t, I promise I’ll tell her then.”   
I thought for a moment, then nodded. Feyre did too, but then spoke. “If you don’t tell her the first time you see her, I will,” she warned.   
Marja walked over then, yawning. “You can take her home now, if you like,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure the wound was as simple as it seemed. It’ll be months until she’s recovered fully, though.”   
“Thank you,” Feyre said.   
I turned to Thomas. “I suspect that she’ll want to come watch training as soon as she’s strong enough to go out. If not, you’re welcome to visit.”   
“I appreciate the-hospitality,” Thomas said, his voice catching slightly, his eyes still wide with surprise.   
I smiled. “I can’t make promises for her,” I told him. “But the two of you seem well-matched.”   
We left him gaping and winnowed straight into Clare’s room at the town house. Dray was asleep on one side of her bed, and we set her down on the other side, tucking her into the sheets. Dray woke up from the noise and wormed his way under them as well, and after a moment Feyre and I joined him.   
Clare did not wake up, and we were careful not to jostle her. But she stirred and murmured. She was alive.   
Feyre and I watched the two of them for a moment, then left, marveling at the love that had formed in those creatures we had made-the love we had somehow passed down to them.  
Feyre  
When we at last were alone, Rhys sobbed as he had not since we were mated, as he would not until the next time his world was remade.  
He did not want to burden Clare, but I think she would not have seen it as such. I didn't argue, though, because she already knew how Rhysand felt. It had been clear enough when he turned and found her there-the way he had looked at her, how reverently he had grasped her hand.  
We had been broken together while she was gone. There had been no comforting for either of us, only the presence of the other trying to calm our jagged souls.   
Now that she was back, I was comforting him, but the words I said were for the both of us.  
“I wanted her to be safe,” he whispered to me as I sat in his lap, one of my hands in his hair.  
“Me too,” I told him. “But she’s safe now. And she was never going to be completely removed from what our lives are like. We’ve made her strong enough to handle those things, because they’re bound to happen.  
“I hate that this happened, Rhys. I hate it just as much as you do. But as long… if she keeps coming back like that-” laughing and triumphant, more proud than scared, more proud than hurt- “I can survive it. I think these are wounds that will heal as she does.”  
In a swift movement, he twisted his head up to mine and kissed me. I could taste his fear and pain as I took it off of him, and my heart swelled.  
“What if they break?” he said then, asking both me and himself.   
“We will keep them safe enough that they will not be damaged the way we were,” I told him with more confidence than I felt. “I won’t live in a world where that happens to them. We’ll make a better one.”   
“And have we failed on that front?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.   
“No,” I told him, although I wasn’t sure why I believed that. It took me a minute to realize why it was true.  
“We’ve made a world with them in it,” I finally said. Tears glinted in my eyes and his as I said the words. “It’s already better than it was.”


	14. Chapter 14

Mor  
I had told Cassian and Nesta the news, then promptly bathed and gone to bed.   
I woke up only a few hours later, but I felt a bit refreshed- at least removed from the events of the previous day and night, like they were no longer right on top of me.   
There was one moment that kept replaying in my mind, though. And it wasn’t about Clare, although I was immeasurably relieved that she was on the road to recovery. No, it was that moment when Az had been struggling to break free, when that male had held the knife above him, poised to strike-  
I knew what I had to do.   
Azriel’s apartment was large and clean-not opulent, but not denying the wealth he had access to. And he was up this early, as I had expected. Probably going to search for the other culprits, because it was highly unlikely that one male had acted alone to organize all of this.  
His eyes widened in surprise when he saw me. “What are you doing here?“ he asked.  
I walked in and sat down, took a deep breath.   
“I am a hateful coward,” I told him.   
He walked over quickly and sat down across from me, opened his mouth to argue- “I am,” I said quickly before he could deny it. Then I paused for a moment. My heart was beating out of my chest. I don’t know how I got the words out.  
“I prefer females,” I told him. He stilled. “I don’t dislike sex with males exactly, but I was never going to love one in that way.”   
The words were easier now, since those ones had come before. “I picked Cassian over you because I wasn’t going to get much feeling from it either way, and I didn’t want you to get hurt. And then I was too scared to tell you why.”   
“For six hundred years, you were too scared,” he murmured, staring at the floor.  
“I was,” I said, feeling tears build in my eyes. “And I don’t expect you to forgive me now, or want anything to do with me-but I hope someday you can, because I was just scared of hurting you, Az, and I hurt you worse because of it, and I am so sorry.”   
He didn’t look up, and after a moment I winnowed out.   
I went to the town house then, feeling both broken and light. It had taken me so long to get those words out, and now that I had-the bad thing that I had expected had happened, but that was the price I had to pay for what I had done.   
And maybe, if he returned as my friend, and if I could someday find a female to love and not have to hide it from anyone-maybe someday, it would be good.   
Feyre and Rhys were in the kitchen, cooking breakfast. They looked to me as I entered, and I made eye contact with Feyre. She was the one I wanted to see, the one I wanted to tell first.  
“I told Az,” I said, not breaking the look. “About-”  
She might have winnowed, she got to me so fast. Then she was embracing me, her body warm. “You are so brave,” she said into my ear, and I think I might have cried then. I was so lucky to have her-to have someone who understood, and did not judge me for my cowardice, but instead helped me to become someone without it.   
“Told him about what?” Rhys asked, looking at us.  
Do you want to tell him? Feyre asked without speaking.   
“Yes,” I said out loud. I turned to Rhys. “This game of will-they-won’t-they, it’s over,” I told him, my voice surprisingly clear. “I should never have let it start, and I certainly shouldn’t have let it go for six hundred years, but-it’s over now, and it’s not going to start again.”   
“And will they or won’t they?” Rhys asked, sitting down.   
“They won’t,” I said. “And I’ve always known, and I should never have led him on-”   
“It got harder the longer you waited,” Rhys said, and I nodded in agreement. He looked up at me, and there was-maybe a bit of disappointment in his eyes, but there was more in my own soul. Mostly there was just concern-for both Az and me. “May I ask why?” he said. I nodded. This part shouldn’t be as hard, I told myself. I know he won’t have a problem with it. But there were strands of biases and issues keeping the words within me, strands that had been made when I was a child Under the Mountain, strands that I had been trying to cut since then but that were still there and stubborn and probably part of why I hadn’t told Az for so long-  
“Do you want me to say it?” Feyre asked me, concern in her eyes. I nodded and looked down, focusing on my breath.   
“She prefers females,” Feyre told Rhys. “She was never going to fall in love with a male, but she was afraid of hurting Az, because she does care about him.”   
I looked up at Rhys. He nodded but did not speak, thinking for a moment. Then he looked up at me.   
“I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me,” he said. “That is fine, Mor. It would have been fine six hundred years ago.”   
“I know, I just-” I was crying again then. Rhys stood up and walked over to me, trading Feyre’s embrace for his, and I leaned into my High Lord as I sobbed.   
“You heard terrible things about people like you,” he murmured, speaking to himself as much as to me. In my peripheral vision, I saw Feyre nod in agreement.   
“We’ll help you get through that,” he said, and I looked up at him in surprise. “Those biases in your mind-they’ve caused you a lot of pain. Azriel too,” he added, and I felt a pang of guilt again. “You deserve to find love, Mor-and you deserve to not have guilt in the way of that.”   
I was overwhelmed by the gratitude I felt in that moment. I couldn’t put it into words, but I let down my mental shields so they could feel it.  
“When did you learn all this?” Rhys asked Feyre, and I stiffened.   
“During the battles against Hybern,” she replied. “I wanted to tell you, but Mor wasn’t ready.”   
“I’m not upset,” Rhys said, although his tone said otherwise. “I just-I want to be someone you can go to with something like that. I’m not trying to get you away from telling Feyre things, even telling her first if you want to. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide things from me. And if you feel like you do, I’ve been doing something wrong.”   
“I don’t know why I felt like I couldn’t tell you,” I told him. “I think it was partially because Feyre was new, and I wasn't as worried about her investments to Azriel-I knew she might be angry on his behalf, but not the way you would be.”   
“I’m not angry at you on his behalf,” he reassured me. “I’m angry that your trauma from way back then ended up hurting the both of you so badly.”  
My trauma. Not my cowardice-the things I had endured.   
They embraced me together then, and I cried once again as they saw all of me for the first time.


	15. Chapter 15

Rhys  
Clare’s bed was ridiculous: four-postered, covered with blankets and pillows and usually dirty clothes and books as well, deep enough that you sank into it and had to claw yourself out as if climbing out of a ditch in the morning. She was teased about it regularly and mercilessly.  
She had saved Azriel. She had nearly killed herself doing it, and she had not taken even a second to pause and think.  
And then, when I entered her room in the late morning, she was awake and sitting up.  
Those mountains of pillows finally had a purpose. She looked tiny and weak, but she was propped up and eating slowly from a tray placed over her legs. Dray sat beside her.  
“Clare,” I said, soft and hesitant. She looked up. There was a pallor to her face that was unfamiliar, a truly disturbing sight, but she mustered a soft smile.  
“Hi,” she said, the word catching a ride on her breath rather than summoning its own energy.  
“What happened?” I asked, coming to sit on that loveseat again. “Who took you?”  
“The one who was in with Az,” she said. Her eyes shone even as the rest of her lay flat.  
“He’s going to go after them this afternoon,” I told her. “He wanted to go right this morning, but I wouldn’t let him.”  
“Good,” she said, raising a hand and letting it drop limply back onto the bed. Then she looked back at me, her eyes sharp once more. “Is the city secure? Is that over?”  
“We’re safe,” I assured her. She nodded and leaned back with a sigh.  
“Wasn’t Dray brilliant?” she said after a moment, as if he wasn’t sitting right next to her.  
“He was,” I agreed, then laughed and looked over to address him. “Dray, that kind of hope is critical in situations like that. You didn’t let yourself get bogged down by fear; you trusted your sister.”  
Dray smiled, but gestured to Clare. “She did it,” he said, and I nodded. She certainly had.  
“I wanted to talk to the two of you about something,” I said. “Clare, are you up for it?”   
She nodded, reaching for Dray to help her sit up further. “What is it?”  
“Which one of you is heir,” I said, and the focus from both of them intensified.  
“Your mother and I have been watching you since you came into your powers,” I told them, “looking out for a sign. I kept expecting one of you to suddenly end up stronger than the other. But that hasn’t happened. Your powers are less similar than they used to be, but still well-matched. About a year ago, we realized that one of you wasn’t going to become an obvious choice. So since then, we’ve been thinking about the differences in your personalities, trying to see if one of you is much more suited for the job.  
“The problem is that you’re not. You both have areas that you would be better and worse at. Clare, you’re persuasive, and you’re a magnetic leader, but you’re stubborn and don’t always trust the people on your team.” Clare raised an eyebrow, her eyes sparkling with the beginnings of a joking retort, but she stayed silent. “And Dray, you’re incredibly humble, and you listen to those around you, but you don’t take charge in a crisis.” Dray nodded, his lips pursed.  
“There’s no clear choice,” I continued. Feyre and I had talked about it this morning over breakfast, adding the events of the previous day and a half to our running tally. Finally, we had come up with a decision.  
“So we want you to choose between yourselves.”  
Clare’s face opened in surprise. She turned to Dray, who was smiling slightly. I felt the energy as a series of rapid-fire thoughts flew between them.   
“Do you think you can manage that?” I asked. Feyre and I had worried that it might strain their relationship, but the only possible way to choose was who wanted it more.  
They turned to me as one, and they were both smiling, and Clare was stifling a laugh. “Yes, absolutely,” she said. I didn’t know what they were thinking, but I was happy with this reaction.  
“I’ll give you time to think, then,” I said. They were already turning to each other as I left the room.  
Dray  
The instant Papa left, I winnowed out of Clare’s room. A moment later, I was back, this time carrying a thick stack of papers.  
I clambered back onto the bed and set them down between us. Clare began flipping through, her fingers confident and eager. She always responded to new responsibility, always did better when something was expected of her. I half expected the new title to speed up her healing.  
Since we were children, we had been talking about the decision, worried that it would tear us apart. When we were young, we had both wanted the job, so those conversations were mostly just reassurances that the one not chosen would be Second, and that we would be able to move past it.  
Then, as we grew into ourselves a bit more, my perspective had shifted. It had been several events that did it-practice commanding in Thomas’s class, my first meeting Under the Mountain. The events of the day before had reinforced what I had recognized and told Clare at age fifteen: I did not want the job.  
I didn’t like being in charge in a crisis. I wanted to be given orders, or to be on the sidelines. Clare was a born commander, designed to be in front of a crowd. We had agreed that I would be Second, and it felt like a weight off both our shoulders. Clare no longer had to temper how badly she wanted the post, and I no longer had to dread the day when the city was invaded and all eyes turned to me.  
Deciding so soon, even without telling our parents, was helpful for another reason: it let us begin to plan what our first actions would be when we were officially named heirs. For the past three years, we had been working on plans for what we would do when given power. Now, it was time to actually do it.  
Clare’s hand came to rest on a bound stack, the thickest of the pile. She pulled it out and began to read through the front page. “I think this is first,” she told me.  
I smiled as I leaned over to look. “This is a great one,” I agreed. “And if we could manage it… But isn’t it a little ostentatious as a first move?”  
“I’m an ostentatious person,” Clare said with a shrug. She started flipping through the pages, faster now, her eyes lighting up. “So, do we wait until the next meeting with them, or do we call our own?”  
“I think we should wait,” I told her. “You need to be completely ready.”  
Clare sighed and leaned back. “Fine,” she agreed, but she was smiling as she said it. “We’ll wait, and then we’ll get this done, and then we’ll get to tell them all about it.”  
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and joined her in reading through the plan. Less than a day ago, I had been screaming into her mind, begging her to save us, to save herself.   
Now she sat beside me, and it seemed as if all our dreams had happened at once.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! I hope you're all enjoying this so far. Comment what you think the next Period of Panic will be about!

Azriel  
I had planned to get right to work, even after the events of the day before. But after what Mor had told me that morning… I couldn’t. Or I could have, but only if it had been a matter of life or death. With an assignment like this, one that could be pushed a day, I could not bring myself to focus after that news.  
Instead, I went flying, sharp and fast, over forests and mountain ranges that blurred beneath me. Eventually, I managed to get the wind loud enough to drown out the emotions coursing through me, so that I could find the thoughts.  
It wasn’t about Mor’s preference. I realized that quickly. Part of me was happy, proud even, that Mor had gotten to a place where she could admit that. I knew the backstory. I knew all the tethers and scars that had kept those words in the dark, and I was happy that she was ripping free.  
But that was a damn long time to lie to me. And she knew how I felt.  
There was some peace in the news. I had been confused for centuries, different sides of Mor not fitting together: the confident and honest woman and the clouded indecisiveness had never matched. Things made sense now.  
And although I didn’t really want to be, I was still happy to finally end the saga. It would be difficult to move on, but I could push myself to do so. The certainty, having a clear final path, was a relief.  
The situation I was in now was not the problem. I was just sad and angry. It felt like a just. And it felt temporary. A long temporary, maybe, but our lives were long.  
I was feeling calmer, if utterly drained of emotions, by late afternoon. I had planned to spend the rest of the day alone, but I got a message from Rhys.  
Clare wants everyone at dinner. She and Dray have something to tell us. Will you come, or is it too soon?  
He knew, I realized, although he could have found out after me.  
I thought for a moment before soaring towards the city.  
I was the last one to arrive. Cassian and Amren had saved me a seat between them, on the opposite side from Mor. She looked up at me as I sat, and I didn’t try to hide the tension in my jaw. The guilt in her eyes as she looked back down was pleasant to see. But even with that weight, her shoulders were light-lighter than I had ever seen her. That was pleasant, too.  
Cassian opened the discussion with a sigh, before turning to me. “We all know what happened,” he said, concern in his eyes.  
“You were the second to know,” Mor said, not looking at me. “I told Feyre during the war with Hybern, but nobody else knew until after.” I gave a shallow nod, and she continued. “Amren had to hold Cassian back from attacking me on your behalf.” I didn’t reply, but my eyes darted to Cassian for a moment, then around to the rest of them. There were definitely two groups: Cassian and Nesta, with primarily concern for me, and Feyre and Amren, who had steel behind their eyes, as if daring me to try anything against Mor. Although I could tell that nobody thought it was entirely one-sided, I still didn’t like the factions it had created within the group.  
“I don’t think any more is going to happen tonight,” Rhys said hesitantly. “If it’s alright with you two, why don’t we move to Clare and Dray’s announcement?” We both agreed.  
Clare was not exactly at the table with us, but propped up on a single bed that had been pulled up to the table. She still looked terrible, but as if her mind-her spark-was back, and just trapped within a damaged shell. Beside her, Dray was tall and proud.  
“This morning, Papa told us to choose for ourselves who would be heir,” he said. There were gasps from around the table. Suddenly, we were all analyzing their appearances. Dray was neat and clean, healthy and strong. Clare looked smaller than she had in years, but there was a visible edge to the way her eyes roved over us.  
She smirked, her eyes heavy, and addressed Rhys. “You didn’t know that we made that decision for ourselves almost three years ago.”  
Rhys threw back his head and laughed.  
“Meet your next High Lady,” Dray said, gesturing to his sister. The words seemed to bring color to her face.  
“And her Second,” she added. We had already started clapping, but it grew deafening at the addition. Cassian wolf-whistled, and the two of them sat there, hands clasped together, smiles splitting their faces.  
“That’s right,” Cassian said, shaking his head. “I mean… that is what comes next.”  
He was right, I realized. My hands were starting to go numb, but still I kept applauding. That feeling was the glimpse of a future that was powerful and secure and perfect. It was the strongest possible form of hope. And it was something we rarely saw.  
“A toast,” said Amren, her thin fingers wrapped around her glass. We mirrored the motion, raising our glasses with a flourish. All eyes were on Clare as we sipped, and she looked back at us under raised eyebrows, her trademark smirk recognizable even with the injury.  
What a future.


	17. Chapter 17

Thomas  
A week later, the Guard had resumed meeting, but too many members were injured for us to be training quite yet. Instead, we spent our days sitting in the main area of the training center, discussing tactics and how the battle had gone and whatever else came up.  
“We need to work on our staff grips,” Vitria was telling me, a few others nodding along. “We know them, but they don’t come naturally. I kept finding myself holding it a foot too high and having to adjust in the middle of a fight.”  
I opened my mouth, ready to agree and set a lesson plan, when my eyes were thrown across the room.  
She was leaning heavily on a cane, her face pale, a light purple bruise streaked across her jaw. She wore a loose tunic with leggings. By the way her small, hesitant step forward tilted to one side, I could tell that the wound I had seen at the healer’s was still there with a vengeance, but only a shadow that quickly passed across her eyes betrayed any pain.  
The Guard slowly turned, registering the presence. I had thought it had been quiet before, but the silence that fell was mighty, roaring.  
Then Vitria began to clap furiously, her eyes damp, and the rest of us quickly followed.  
Clare smiled and continued to walk forwards. I rushed over and put an arm around her waist. She sat where I had been, on the lip of the thin stage on one side of the room. I joined the rest of the Guard on the floor.  
“You heard the basics of the story, right?” she asked once the applause had died down. There were shouts of agreement from around the room. “Okay, then I’m not going to go through that again.”  
She pulled up the side of her shirt to reveal the thick bandages along one side of her abdomen. “It’ll be a few months until I can train again,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But I’ll be fine.”  
“We’ll be glad to have you back,” Vitria called.  
Clare smiled, but there was more in it than just gratitude for a compliment. “That’s what I came to talk to everyone about,” she said. “You actually won’t be getting me back.”  
She let the silence grow for a moment.   
“I’ve been named heir.”  
It was quiet again, and then the applause thundered out again, even louder than before. I joined in, looking at the figure on the stage in a new way. Our next High Lady.  
“Obviously and unfortunately, I won’t have time to be a part of this group anymore, although I’ll still be training here once I’m healed. So I wanted to tell you what would happen next as soon as possible.”  
Suddenly, a voice sounded in my head. It’s Vitria, right?   
Grinning at her impertinence, I nodded to Clare, who turned back to the crowd.   
“I’m thrilled to be passing my position onto Vitria,” she said. “It was a close race when I got it-she was ready then, and she’s even more so now.”  
Vitria ran up to the front to hug Clare, a hand over her mouth. For the third time, applause filled the room, and I was gratified to see that it was heartfelt all the way around. This was a popular promotion.  
Clare motioned to Vitria to take the stage, and the girl complied, her wings raised proudly. She said a few words, pride and the future and all that. I knew we had made the right decision. Vitria had the potential to be a better commander than Clare had been. For the High Lady’s daughter, the newly named heir, this had always been a training exercise; for an Illyrian girl without royal blood, it was a dream.  
“Is there anything else?” Vitria asked me at the end.  
“I think we’re done for the day,” I told them. “Tomorrow, we start training again.”  
The group crowded around Vitria as they began to shuffle out. Clare stood up slowly, Vitria’s arm around her waist, and began to leave with the rest of them. I was ready to let her go, to be a coward and just bask in seeing her alive, but I remembered Feyre’s promise at the last moment.  
“Clare, can I talk to you about something?” I asked. She shrugged out of Vitria’s grasp and took the few steps back to the stage. Although she was still smiling, her chin high, she was still pale and drawn. She looked relieved to be sitting back down.  
“Congratulations,” I told her. “You’ll be an incredible High Lady, but we’ll be sad to see you go.”  
“Thank you,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “I’ll miss this, but Vitria’s going to care more than I can. You’ll be fine.”  
I agreed, then looked down at my hands for a moment, trying to think of what to say. It was strange and overwhelming to be sitting with her. I had never liked the idea of having a mate, after seeing how overprotective and irrational it made my friends and comrades. I still didn’t think I liked that part of it, how out of control I felt. But I had been wrong about the feelings for the other person. They were good.  
“Clare, I came to the healer’s complex a few minutes after you came in, and I… I realized something,” I said.  
“What?” she asked.  
I reached to take her hand, then thought better of it and drew mine back. She looked into my eyes quizzically, the silver in hers overwhelming the blue.  
Then, as I opened my mouth to tell her, her shoulders stiffened, and she gave a little gasp, and I could tell that she knew.  
“We’re mates,” she whispered.   
I nodded, mute.  
A second passed. Another. A hundred of them. Clare sat utterly still, her eyes on me but her mind streaking through what must have been a million thoughts. I sat just as frozen, watching her.  
Then, suddenly, or as suddenly as she could move, she struggled to her feet. “I have to go,” she said in a rush, then met my eyes. “I’m not rejecting you or anything-I’m not making any sort of statement, I just have to think. I have to go.”  
“Of course,” I said at once, standing as well. She gave me a little smile before winnowing out. I sat back down heavily and ran a hand through my hair.  
Clare and I had always been as close as our respective roles allowed. We would have furious debates during tactics lessons, sometimes getting so engrossed that we didn’t notice the rest of the group leaving. She was vicious in those, and I was too, but we would both back down without a problem if we were eventually convinced of the other’s side.   
She was talented, and brilliant, and mighty. I had always felt like I was lucky to know er-to train her, to learn from her, and eventually to have her in my government. But until now, I hadn’t thought of her as anything except a one-in-a-million student.  
Suddenly, she wasn’t my student. She was my future High Lady, and my mate. Suddenly, I was running through scenes from the previous year under a new lens.   
Our last debate, so focused on each other that everything around us faded away, fast and furious and ending with a concession free of animosity or scorn, just joy over the process.   
Our last sparring match-I knew more strikes, but she moved like a storm, like the air itself was on her side.   
The time I had challenged her to a match using magic, one of the few times she was allowed to use it in practice, and her shadows had me on the floor before I finished the word ‘go’, and she stuck her tongue out as she pulled me up.  
It had changed so quickly, I almost didn’t have time to conceptualize it. But it seemed right, like it had been there all along.


	18. Chapter 18

Dray  
The day before, Clare had been cleared for brief excursions. She had immediately decided to stop in at the next Guard meeting. We had agreed, and at the same time, we had set aside those minutes to sit together and panic until she was back.  
She was gone for around twenty minutes, within which we made small talk and tried to ignore time passing, and then she winnowed in next to my chair. In one movement, she grabbed my hand and winnowed both of us out of the room.  
We stumbled back into existence in her bedroom, and she immediately clambered onto the bed, ending up on her back. She was breathing hard, but it didn’t seem to be because of pain or exhaustion. I climbed up next to her, sitting against the headboard and crossing my legs. “What happened?”  
She looked at me, gave a breathy little laugh. “He’s my mate.”  
“I know,” I said. Her head jerked towards me, her jaw squared, and I explained. “Mama and Papa were there when he figured it out. He asked them if he could tell you first. Mama made him promise to do it at the first opportunity.”  
Clare looked back up at the gauze canopy above her bed and sighed. “That’s fine, I suppose,” she said.  
“So?” I asked. “What do you think?”  
“I have no idea,” Clare said. I raised my eyebrows as she waited a beat before clarifying. Her voice, usually sharp and poised, was stumbling over the words. “I mean, I’ve known him for so long, and we’re close, but I’ve never thought about him like that… if I was going to have a mate, I suppose I would think of someone like him, but not him in particular-besides, I’m seventeen, I never expected to have a mate at this age, I don’t know-”  
She cut herself off with a sharp breath and started laughing roughly, closing her eyes. After a moment, I did too.  
“Of course you have a mate. And of course you found out now.”  
“I’ve found out too many things this week,” Clare declared. “I’d like to stop now, please.”  
Mor  
After getting Clare’s permission, Rhys told us all what had happened at lunch. The reactions across the table were mixed: Cassian and Amren immediately lunged to protect Clare from what they viewed as a threat, while the rest of us were able to express something positive about the pairing. Mostly, we just wondered out loud what she would think, what she would do.  
I took a walk through the Rainbow that afternoon, looking into windows instead of buying anything. A few nights before, I had gone to Rita’s alone. I had been doing that for years in secret, and this trip was no different in format, but it felt entirely new. Everything looked different to me, more beautiful, as if a veil separating me from the outside world had been lifted.   
Learning against the rail of the bridge, looking out at the shimmering water, I was surprised to feel a tap on my shoulder, and to find Dray standing next to me.  
“Can Clare and I talk to you?” he asked. “We have something we want to share.”  
Casting one more look out at the city wrapped around me, I agreed, and we winnowed up to a large balcony on the side of the house. Clare was already set up there, and Dray took a seat next to her. I sat across from them, noticing the papers strewn across their side.  
“How are you, Clare?” I asked. “How’s the thinking?”  
“There’s too much thinking,” Clare said with a wave of her hand. Her eyes looked different when she thought about that situation-shy and young and thrilled.  
I dropped the subject. “What did you want to talk to me about?”  
They looked at each other and gave matching conspiratory grins, something I hadn’t seen from them in a few years. Dray met my eyes. “You already heard that we had decided our future positions years ago.”  
At my nod, Clare continued. “Well, we’ve also been thinking about what work we would do once we got those positions.”  
“We have them now,” Dray told me with a shrug. “And we’ve decided what we want our first move to be. We would check it with our parents, but-”  
He threw a jerking glare at Clare, who smiled. “But I’m a drama queen and want to surprise them. So we thought we would check it with you instead.”  
I was stunned for a moment, then doubled over laughing. “Sure,” I agreed as I straightened back up, wiping tears from the corners of my eyes.  
“Here’s the plan,” said Dray, sliding a stack of papers over to me.  
I was still chuckling as I took it, but the breath left my mouth as I read the title. My hands began to shake as I flipped through the pages one by one. I could feel Clare and Dray watching me, anticipating my response, but I didn’t look up as I read, every page sinking deeper. By the time I flipped it closed, I was crying, a hand covering my mouth.  
Clare had a satisfied little smile on her lips. Dray’s was just empathetic. They waited patiently while I recovered, looking down at the title again and again, trying to make myself believe it was real.  
“You did this?” I choked.  
“Not yet,” said Clare. “But we will, if it’s alright with you.” At my incredulous, bleary glare, she laughed.  
“I think-” I shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to be Third instead of Mor. “I think you need to tell one of them. It’s a brilliant plan-gods, it’s an incredible plan, I can’t believe you did it-but the effects are too widespread to do without one of them signing off.”  
Dray stared at Clare for a moment until she sighed and nodded. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “But can we tell just Mama? Can I see Papa’s face after we do it?”  
I looked at her, at both of them. She was arrogant; I had always known that. But I was beginning to realize, since she had gotten the post, that she wanted to be known for doing good. Credit and glory, sure, but she wanted to deserve it. The last of my reservations about her leadership were melting away.  
“I think you can,” I said, and she whooped. Dray laughed at the sound, but he was smiling widely enough that I knew he was looking forward to that moment too.


	19. Chapter 19

Clare  
We told Mama that evening, and her reaction was the same. I stayed up late that night, sitting on my balcony and looking across the bright city.  
Things had fallen into place so fast in the past week. So much had changed; so much about my future had been settled. I was scared of having so much figured out. I had enjoyed a world wide open.  
On the other hand, the things that had been cemented, the future created… it was equal to or beyond my wildest dreams. There was nothing I wanted more. In fact, when I thought about it, there was nothing I even wanted to consider. All that worried me was how quickly it had happened.  
If it was only an artificial barrier, a waiting period created only by my anxiety over my age, it seemed pointless to wait for any of it. I could see myself being happy for millenia. What did another few years matter?  
I stayed up until the first few streaks of sunset appeared over the mountains, then slept until lunch. When I woke up, I put on a plain black dress and a blue silk robe, the first time I had put any effort into my appearance since the battle.  
“I’m going to Thomas’s,” I said to Dray, having just winnowed into his room.  
He looked up at me and smiled. “What are you going to say?” he asked.  
“We’re going to talk,” I told him, dodging the question. I had a plan, but the words seemed fragile and precious. I didn’t want to use them up now.  
“Let me know,” he said. I agreed and winnowed out.  
Thomas lived in a house on the outskirts of the city. He had invited the Guard over a few times.  
He opened the door only a few seconds after I knocked. His dark hair was swept to one side, he was wearing an apron, and he looked shocked and terrified and thrilled to see me.  
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming,” I said, following him in. “Are you cooking?”  
“It’s not a problem,” he said, leading me into the kitchen. Indeed, there was a pot bubbling. I pushed myself up onto a counter, hoping he didn’t see me wince at the motion. He walked back over to the pot and began stirring it slowly, his hand looking shaky.  
“So,” he said, hesitant. “Have you… thought about things?”  
“Yes,” I said, watching his back. I could see the tension in his shoulders. I knew that mine matched.  
“Can you tell me what you’ve been thinking?” I asked. He nodded, took his pot off the heat, and turned to lean against the counter opposite mine.  
“I had never thought about you like that before. I mean, I always enjoyed spending time with you, and we got along well, but I never considered our relationship changing. But when I realized, when I thought about it after…” He ran a hand through his hair and looked down, shy. “I started thinking about what we would be like together. And I think… whatever force decides mates, I think it was right.” He looked up and met my eyes.  
“I agree,” I said, and his eyebrows shot up.  
I laughed and kept talking. “I kept thinking about all the time we’ve spent together, talking or sparring or whatever. They’re all good memories; they’re some of the best moments of my life. Being with you, getting more moments like that… I think it would be fun. I think we would be happy.”  
My speech would have continued, but Thomas cut me off, taking the few steps across the kitchen to reach and kiss me, one hand on my back and the other on my neck. I pressed closer to him, looping my hands around the back of his head. He was careful, cognizant of my injury, even though I could tell holding back was a force of will.  
“That force was right,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. He laughed, smiling widely. He looked younger, lighter.  
“Yes, it was,” he said fervently, and picked me up in one smooth motion.  
Whatever he was cooking, it never got finished.

Dray  
Clare stayed with him that weekend. Afterwards, she claimed to still be living with us, but in reality it was an even split between the two. She trained, sometimes with Thomas and sometimes with Cassian, gradually building up her strength again. In three months’ time, she became a phenom once again. Thomas and Cassian helped her make adjustments to her style, and she was still advised not to fly, but she could move and she had her magic. That was plenty.  
We worked on the plan for an hour or two almost every day, our papers slowly creeping across her massive bed, which she was rarely sleeping in these days. Her feet pressed together, Clare would lean over the sea of words and peer through them, picking out patterns and opportunities. Slowly, the plan got better.   
I only saw Clare when we were working and at lunch, but those were always good times. She finally had color back in her cheeks; she talked fast and started friendly arguments and laughed loudly and often. Sometimes Thomas would join us for lunch, and we were struck from the very first of those meetings by how right that pairing felt. They were foils; they vollied words back and forth faster than we could register; they were delighted by every sound and movement the other made.  
Clare was outrageously, unreasonable happy. All the time. We saw less of her, but we were okay with it. Sometimes her eyes would lift from the setting at hand and look out the window, and she would get this airy, stupid smile on her face, as if she couldn’t believe this was her life.


	20. Chapter 20

Cassian  
We had met over dinner, and Azriel had shared his progress on finding Clare’s kidnapper. He believed there to be a small cell from Hybern still functioning, and he thought a mission to capture them would begin within the next few weeks.  
The last dregs of Clare’s kidnapping were evaporating as she healed. We were transitioning back into a time of peace and safety, going about our usual business without surprises.  
Then, one Saturday, I was awakened midmorning by a scream in my head.  
MEETING. NOW.  
I was second to arrive, but we were all within seconds of each other. Feyre and Rhys sat together at the table, Rhys holding a letter in his hands.   
He looked up at us as we arrived. “Beron knows about Lucien.”  
It took me a moment to understand the meaning of the words. Once we realized what it meant, we sat, our bodies folding as one.  
“He’s asking for a meeting in the Day Court,” Feyre said. “He wants-no, demands-both of us there.”  
“It’s a trap,” Az said at once. “Obviously.”  
“Probably,” Amren agreed. “But it’s likely a meeting, too. Just a dangerous one.”  
“I think we have to go,” said Rhys. “We can’t risk being behind on this saga for a second. And together, we’re stronger than Beron. I’d wager that we’re stronger than anything he can throw at us in foreign territory.”  
“I’ll come with you,” I offered. “It’d be stupid not to bring backup.”  
“I don’t think we should,” Feyre said. “If it’s a trap, he might go after Velaris while we’re distracted. You should all stay on guard for the day, and handle whatever comes up.”  
Rhys looked at her, then turned back to me and nodded. “She’s right. We can call if we need backup.” After a moment, I agreed.  
“Nobody leave the city,” Feyre told the table. “Be ready to move at any moment.”  
Clare nodded. She leaned across the table towards them. “He’s going to be heir to the Day Court,” she said with a grin, and vanished.  
Rhys sighed. He stood, and we all followed suit. “I damn sure hope so,” he said, grasping Feyre’s hand.  
We hadn’t expected this conflict to come up so soon. Honestly, we had hoped for a longer period of peace around it. But it wasn’t the end of the world.  
With our encouragement, Feyre and Rhys winnowed out to go to the meeting. I put the city guard on standby, then headed out to train.  
This was nothing compared to what we had dealt with in the past. And if that had ended well, this certainly could.


	21. Chapter 21

Mor  
I watched Az through that meeting. I kept him in my peripheral vision even as I said goodbye to Feyre and Rhys.  
As we walked out, I grabbed his arm. “Can we talk?” I asked quietly, then stepped back a pace, giving him room to say no. After a moment, he sighed and nodded.  
We went into a small side parlor and sat across from each other. “What?” he asked. I took a deep breath before talking.   
“I miss you, Az. You already know how sorry I am, but I want to make sure you know how important you are to me. You can have all the time you need, and all the space. I just wanted to say that I want you back in my life, if you ever want to be.”  
“I do matter to you?” he asked. My eyes widened.  
“God, of course, Az. You saved my life when I was seventeen. You’ve saved it at least a dozen times since then. You have no idea how much I care about you.”  
He looked straight at me for a long while. His eyes were guarded, still pained. But I could see the change as he began to believe me.  
“I will do whatever I can to make myself a good friend to you,” I told him. “Say the word.”  
He nodded, and after a moment, he stood. I followed suit, and we began to walk out. Something within my chest eased the tiniest bit. I told it to be quiet.   
This was the last time I would be approaching him if he didn’t want me to. From now on, he called the shots. He deserved that-he deserved so much more than that. My happiness, the guilt I felt, was not his responsibility to bear.  
He turned to me as we walked out. It took him a moment to speak, and his voice was rough and low.  
“There is a part of me that is happy for you. For being able to live the way you always should have been able to.  
And I think… someday. I’m not ready now, but I hope that I will be eventually.”  
“I’m so glad,” I said softly, and put a hand on his shoulder. He smiled the tiniest bit before leaving ahead of me. I didn’t follow.  
I took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. My eyes had teared up.  
Never in my life had I felt complete freedom. Not complete ecstasy-I still carried that guilt, and with gratitude. But I had no secrets, no hidden shame.  
I could have shattered from the lightness of it all. Instead, I met up with Cassian, and we sparred, and he did not ask why I laughed so loudly and easily. I just did.  
Then, in the early afternoon, one of our communication stones lit up.

We all arrived at the same time. Azriel brought Nesta and Elain, and all three of them were wearing gardening gloves.  
Clare and I stepped forward as we spun into existence and saw someone standing a few paces away-a red-haired High Fae male with a sword and fine clothes.   
Lucien Vanserra turned towards our group. Elain smiled at him and he smiled back, but not as excitedly as he normally would. His eyes scanned our group, and widened once they finished. “They’re handling something,” I said before he could ask.   
“Something to do with you,” Clare added. “I thought you would know about it.”   
“I didn’t know they were meeting today,” Lucien said. His breathing was heavier than normal. “But I did know that Beron found out about my… lineage. That’s why I’m here.”   
Clare looked sideways at me. She didn’t say anything, not even in my head, but I knew what she was asking.   
“Clare is acting High Lady,” I told Lucien.   
Thank you, Clare said in my mind. Her face said nothing as she stepped forward and asked Lucien: “What were you planning to ask my parents?”   
Lucien did a quick double take, which I understood. But he recovered quickly, and addressed Clare with something close to the way he would talk to Rhys. “I’m… concerned for my safety,” he admitted. “Beron will be furious with me, no doubt.”   
“He might try to punish you.” Elain said.  
Lucien looked at me. “He might try to kill me. And I’m not as strong as a High Lord, not to mention his armies. I won’t survive that alone.”   
“You’re asking for the Night Court’s protection,” Clare summarized.   
Lucien nodded. “Rhysand is stronger than any of the other High Lords, and Feyre’s just as strong as any of them. This is the only court that would definitely win that fight.”   
“Lady Clare,” Cassian said quietly. Clare turned. “We need to discuss this before you make a decision.”  
Clare nodded, then turned to a suddenly angry Elain. “Can you take our guest to the town house?” she asked. “Get him something to eat? I’m sure you want to catch up.”   
“I want him to live,” Elain said, stepping towards Clare. Normally, Rhys or Feyre would step in the center, protecting their daughter. But today Rhys and Feyre were gone, and Clare stood alone. I would have intervened, but she was not in danger. And Elain was right to be worried.   
“I do too,” Clare said, not backing down. “But I don’t know if this is the best court to do that without our High Lord and Lady.”   
After a moment, Elain nodded. She turned to Lucien and gripped his arm. The two winnowed away.  
Clare sighed deeply before turning towards Cassian. “Would we win that fight?” she asked.  
“I’m not completely sure,” Cassian admitted. “Rhys and Feyre are our biggest advantages in battle, but-we could think about it differently. In a way that they wouldn’t.”   
“They wouldn’t think about Dray and I,” Clare realized.  
“Your parents wouldn’t let you into the center of that,” Cassian agreed. “And I would prefer not to, either-but if it was our only option, I would let you fight. And you’re… Clare, both of you are as strong as any High Lord, except maybe your father, and that’s just because he’s older.”   
“Okay,” Clare said, beginning to pace. “So we may not be head-and-shoulders over the Autumn Court without Mama and Papa, but we’re still stronger than every other court if you count Dray and I.”   
“Clare, your parents will kill me if I let you two fight when it’s not an emergency,” Cassian argued.   
Clare ignored Cassian completely. “So even without my parents, we still stand a better chance of winning this than anyone else. And there might not even be another court that’s willing to fight that hard.”   
“The Day Court,” Amren said, stepping towards the two. “I’m sure Helion would be willing to fight for his son. And he may not have the magic we do, but he has enough knowledge-spells and wards and such.”   
“Lucien would stand a chance there,” Cassian said. His eyes asked Clare to believe that.   
“What do you think, Dray?” Clare asked. And Dray, who had been silent through most of this, stepped forwards next to Amren.   
“I think Night and Day are the only two options,” he said quietly. “And I think we need to remember that if it’s a battle for Lucien, the fighting won’t be very spread out.”   
“The meeting’s at the Day Court,” Clare said. “Beron’s there.”  
“So that’s out of the question,” I said.   
“The question now,” Amren said, turning to Clare, “is what are we willing to give up in order to protect the heir to the Day Court?”   
“What would my parents do?” Clare asked. She looked at each of us in turn, Cassian last. After a full minute of heated staring, he eventually nodded.   
Without another word, Clare winnowed away.


	22. Chapter 22

Elain  
“And then this pillar of light came down, and Azriel just froze. And this man- sorry, male- winnowed in, and he was about to stab Azriel, and we were all trying to get through the wall- and then Clare winnowed in, and she was bleeding, and she just ran right up and stabbed that male in the heart.”   
“Holy rutting hell,” Lucien breathed. The last time he had seen Clare, the most dangerous thing she had been doing was Junior Guard drills. A lot had changed since then.   
Just as I was about to start the story back up again, Clare winnowed into the dining room. Lucien stood at her entrance, and I did as well. He just looked scared, but I was glaring at her in a way that Feyre and Rhysand surely wouldn’t have tolerated. I wasn’t a daemati, but I was doing my best to put words into her head: There is only one right choice here.  
I knew Clare saw my expression, but she didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, she walked straight up to Lucien and said without pause: “You are a friend of our court and our city. If you wish to remain here, we will help you do so-even if we must fight on your behalf.”   
I exhaled with something that might have been a sob. Lucien bowed- at the waist, he bowed to Clare, who smiled.  
“You are not to leave the city while we’re protecting you,” she continued. “There must always be an Inner Circle member in the same building as you. Don’t do anything stupid.” Lucien nodded.   
Clare then walked towards the door. “I’m going to put the city on alert,” she said. “And I know it’s obvious, but none of you are allowed to go anywhere either. Actually, everyone stay with someone who can winnow. We need to be able to meet up quickly.”   
“Good,” Cassian said, and Clare turned to him. “That’s what your parents would have done,” he explained. Clare gave him a tight-lipped smile before winnowing out.


	23. Chapter 23

Thomas  
I was finalizing my lesson plans for the coming week when I heard a voice in my head. Meet me at the training center as soon as you can, it said. Although the tone wasn’t panicked, my heart still started racing. It was lucky that I was already there.   
Clare appeared a moment later. She was wearing casual clothes, and her hair was down- not dressed for battle by any means. But there was a definition to her movement and a glint to her eyes that wasn’t usually there. “What’s wrong?” I asked immediately, reaching to grasp her hands.   
She let me take them both. “I’m going to call the Guard here, and I need you to give them a message as they come through,” she said.   
“Of course,” I agreed. “What message?”   
“Nobody’s leaving the city today,” she said, looking at me clearly. “We have an- increased risk of attack, and we need all troops ready to go.”   
“I’ll let them know,” I said, pulling Clare closer to me. I could feel her heart against my side, beating fast and hard. “We’re the strongest court by far,” I told her, stroking her hair. “If there’s an attack, we’ll win.”   
“Don’t tell the Guard this,” she said into my chest, her voice muffled. “I don’t want to freak them out. But…”  
“But?” I pried.   
She stepped back one pace, so that she could look in my eyes. They were wide, her face pale, but her voice was clear. “My parents are at a meeting. If this battle happens, they won’t be here for it.”   
She kissed me, fierce and brief. Then she stepped back, pulling away fully. “I need to let the perimeter guard and the priestesses know,” she said. “If this happens, we’re going to try to relocate it, and they need to be ready to go sooner rather than later. Go over to the townhouse, and we’ll all have lunch?” I nodded without speaking, and she winnowed away.  
I pulled a stone out of my pocket and pressed it: the non-emergency Guard call. We had only used it for drills before.   
Vitria showed up first, as expected, with ruffled wings and hair. “No one’s to leave the city today,” I told her. “There’s a possible attack, and we may have to march.” She nodded, even as disappointment flickered in her eyes. I knew she had been planning a training flight across the court. But like a good commander, she walked to stand next to me, to help pass on the message.  
As we spread the message through the young fighters, all I could think about was how they would be battling without the incredible protection they had always had before-without the High Lord and High Lady watching over.  
I especially thought about Clare, who would probably take that role on.  
Dray  
Everything okay? I asked Mama and Papa in my head. After a moment almost long enough to make me panic, I got an answer back: We’re holding a shield to keep Helion and Beron apart. But we’ll be fine.  
“The negotiations are apparently not going well,” I announced to the group.   
“Well, there’s no way they were going to,” Mor said. Lucien just watched us, sitting close to Elain, looking like his mind was somewhere else.  
Clare winnowed into the dining room. Azriel immediately handed her a sandwich, which she bit into without speaking to any of us. “Everyone’s on alert?” Azriel asked, and she nodded.   
There was a knock at the door downstairs. Clare winnowed out and returned a minute later with Thomas. Just like that, she looked calmer.   
“The Guard is ready,” Thomas said. He looked at Clare but spoke to all of us. “They’re getting dressed and packed now. They’ll be ready to go in half an hour.”   
“Good,” Clare said. She handed him a sandwich. “Now,” she said, sitting down at the table, “we eat, and we pack,”  
We all started chewing faster, ready to get going. There was a feeling in my stomach that was almost like hunger, but was pushing the food away from my mouth, not towards. Fear, I realized.   
Then there was an explosion of noise, of anger and panic, so strong that I cried out. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t coming from the dining room, but from within my own head. And a moment more to know that it was coming from Mama and Papa.   
What happened? What’s wrong? I shouted into the storm. Dimly, I could see Thomas with his arms around Clare. Mor ran to me and gripped my arm, tethering me to my real setting.   
It’s a trap, I heard clearly. Then the noise pulled back. Suddenly I was back in the dining room, just talking to them in my head.   
He left-Beron, Papa said. He’s going to kill Lucien. He never meant to negotiate.   
We can find a way out, Mama said loudly. Then we’ll find Lucien, and try to help him. You just stay safe. You’re not the targets, but he very well might attack you since he has the chance.   
Don’t worry about Lucien, Papa commanded. Just keep yourselves safe until we get out.   
Then they went silent. I could feel the hum of their energy in the back of my mind.   
“What is it? What happened?” Lucien asked. Clare didn’t answer. She was breathing hard.   
“It was a trap,” I told Lucien, and Clare shot me a grateful look. “He’s trapped Mama and Papa, and probably Helion too. And he’s left-left to come kill you, most likely.”   
“We have to get ready,” Cassian said, standing. “Beron’s not an idiot. He’ll think of this place eventually.”  
Like an omen, a stone in our pockets started blinking. I pulled mine out first-the same one as when Lucien arrived. The border guards.  
“Lucien, library!” Cassian barked before winnowing out. I followed him, twisting onto the wall on the edge of the city. “What is it?” Cassian asked the guard there. He didn’t speak-just pointed to a scope, his face white. Cassian stepped forward and looked into it, swearing viciously at what he saw. Mor went next, then Azriel, then Clare, each of them echoing Cassian’s words. I hung back, almost not wanting to know. But after Amren and Nesta, it was my turn, and I did stand up and look through.   
There was an army there, marching towards us. It was far away, but massive. At the front of it, I could see glints of red and yellow and green-fire.   
Beron, and a few of his sons, would be here within half an hour.


	24. Chapter 24

Clare  
I slammed up a wall in my mind as quickly as I could. Mama and Papa needed to focus on escaping whatever trap Beron had set for them.   
“I’ll-I’ll start evacuation protocols,” Cassian said. He seemed a tiny bit lost-an adjective I had never used for him in a battle before. The missing members of our group had thrown him off more than the rest of us.  
“Wait,” Mor said, and we all froze. Mor turned to me with her jaw set. “Technically, Clare has rank right now,” she said. “Clare, you don’t have to take that on if you don’t want to. But you know your own powers-and Dray’s- better than anyone else.”   
“That’s true,” Cassian admitted. “Normally, I would take a situation like this. But you know how you’d be most effective. I don’t.”  
“Dray, do you want it?” Amren asked.   
“Hell no,” Dray said. All eyes then turned to me.  
“We can take it, Clare,” Mor said gently. Thomas put an arm around my waist. “Nobody would blame you for not wanting to be in charge.”   
I laughed.   
“What’s funny?” Mor asked. I stepped out of Thomas’s grip.   
“Have you met me?” I asked them. “I always want to be in charge.”

“Mor, Cassian, Az, you have sections of the city you take, right?”  
“Quarters,” Azriel replied. “But Feyre takes the fourth.”   
“Give Dray a quarter,” I told them.  
“Feyre takes the front one-should we switch it around?” Cassian asked.   
“Figure it out yourselves,” I said, waving my hand. “Dray has stronger magic than the rest of you, but don’t give him the most dangerous one.” They nodded as one, faces grim.   
“Amren,” I said, and she turned to face me. “I need you to check the wards around the city,” I told her. “Make sure they’re strong.”   
“We have defenses against individual courts,” Amren said. “They’re complex, and I doubt I’d finish before they got here, but I can limit how many get in.”   
“Go for that, then,” I commanded.  
“What am I doing?” Nesta asked, eyes flashing.   
“No-” Cassian started, but I put a hand out and he fell silent.   
I turned back to Nesta. “You know the evacuation plans, right?”   
“For the whole city,” Nesta replied.   
“Then you need to help out with those,” I told her. “Make sure everyone’s somewhere safe.”   
I turned to Thomas. “We need to-” I started, but before I could finish he pulled a stone from his pocket. The emergency Guard call was already buzzing. “Get there before they do,” I told him. “I’ll be there in a minute.” He nodded and pushed off, swooping into the city.   
“You know, I always hoped that Tarquin would end up against Beron,” Mor commented.   
“Why?” Azriel asked.   
“Because it would hurt his ego the most,” Dray answered, laughing.   
“You didn’t think of us, then,” I told Mor. “We’ll hurt his ego even more.”   
“Let’s beat him, then,” Cassian said. The laughter died from my mouth. We were fighting a High Lord today. And for all my bravado, and all of Dray’s, we did not have one of our own.  
“Good luck,” I told them all, and winnowed away.  
The Training Center was full but close to silent. There was no idle chatter or casual jokes. Hair was quickly braided, weapons sharpened, all without a smile to be seen.   
“The Autumn Court is attacking,” I announced, and heads rose to see me. “We have something that they want back, but it doesn’t belong to them.   
“The Guard’s first priority is to get all civilians evacuated. Nesta Archeron will be helping you with that. Once you finish, split into quarters. Morrigan, Cassian, Azriel, and my brother are each commanding defense of a quarter of the city, and you’ll help.”  
“What am I doing?” Thomas asked.   
“Same thing as you did last time we were attacked,” I told him. “This is a dense area-make sure everyone here is safe.” In an emergency, we’ll put you somewhere else, I told him silently.  
“What are you going to do, Clare?” Vitria asked. She had two swords strapped between her wings, and a glinting green Siphon on each hand.  
I looked at Thomas as I told them: “I’m going to help my father in the air. Try to make sure nobody gets into Velaris in the first place.” His eyes widened, face paled, and I sent him a silent plea to not say it. He shook his head but did not speak.   
“Our home,” I told them.   
“Our home,” they replied.   
I walked to Thomas and kissed him with my arms around his neck. “I will come back,” I whispered.   
“Please do,” he replied, his lips barely moving. I hugged him tightly for a moment before stepping away.  
I walked all the way out of the training center, running my fingers along the brace I had on my wings. I was technically able to fly, but I still wasn’t supposed to. By the end of this day, though, it might be the only option.  
I took a step and winnowed into the sky.


	25. Chapter 25

Vitria  
We marched as one towards the bridge, towards the center of the city.  
People were already out, starting evacuations. “What’s going on?” someone asked me as we walked by.   
“There’s an attack coming,” I said, not slowing down. “But don’t worry. The whole Inner Circle’s here to stop it.”  
“Vitria!” a Guard member shouted from the back. I turned quickly towards the sound-  
Just quickly enough to miss a sword headed for my shoulder. It came close enough that a piece of my hair fell to the ground.   
I drew both my swords before my attacker turned back to me. It was a High Fae male, and not one I recognized. He charged towards me, but before I could parry, Orion distracted him by shooting an arrow past his face. When he looked the other way, I knocked him out with the broad side of my sword.   
“I had that,” I told Orion, not sheathing my swords.   
“I know,” he replied. “But minimize casualties, right?” I nodded. We stared at each other for a minute. Then, at the same time, we both shouted: “CLARE!”  
She appeared in front of us a moment later. Her hair was braided, and she had a sword, but she wasn’t wearing leathers-there had been no time for her to change and get ready.   
“What is it?” she asked. I pointed to the male on the ground.   
“I thought the attack hadn’t started yet,” Orion said. I watched as Clare’s face whitened.   
“I did too,” she breathed.   
“So what-” Orion started. Clare held a hand up and closed her eyes. A moment later, she opened them and swore.   
Before I had to ask, an image appeared in my mind-a map of Velaris with the minds lit up. It looked the same as it had last time.   
“They took advantage of the meeting,” Clare said, thinking out loud.   
“What meeting?” I asked. Clare looked at me, her eyes a bit damp.   
“My parents aren’t here,” she finally said. “We’re on our own.”   
“What?” I asked in shock. If they weren’t there, then it wasn’t going to end suddenly and completely the way it had last time. We would actually have to win. And there was the other attack too-  
“Breathe, Vitria,” Clare said sharply. I took a shuddering breath. “You can’t freak out,” she continued, a little softer. “You-the Guard needs to be on top of its game.”   
A moment later, four figures winnowed in next to Clare: Morrigan, Cassian, Azriel, and Dray. Some of the newer guard members stepped back in shock at seeing three Inner Circle members, but I had known Clare long enough not to let my surprise show.   
“Shit,” Cassian whispered, no doubt as Clare put the map into their heads.   
“The plan doesn’t change,” Clare told them, words sharp and disjointed. “But you’re all going to be fighting- really fighting, on the ground. The Guard takes the Rainbow first, then spreads to the material district. You all take your quarters. If citizens are in their homes, clear hostiles before evacuating.”   
“Clare, we can’t handle both armies,” Azriel said. “We won’t be strong enough to stand against Beron after this.”   
“Amren’s working on wards to keep them out,” Clare replied. “You just have the handle the ones inside. Don’t worry about anything else.”   
“Clare, the only way we wouldn’t have to worry about anything else would be if Rhys were up in the sky, shooting the army down- oh,” Cassian realized. “That is-that is the exact opposite of what your parents want you doing in this situation,” he continued after a second, fists suddenly clenched.   
“I would let them handle this if they could,” Clare told him. “But they’re not here. Keep everyone safe,” she ordered. Before anyone could retort again, she was gone.   
We all stood stunned for a moment. Rhysand and Feyre were not here?  
But I was too full of tense energy to stop for any decent amount of time. “We don’t have time to argue with her,” I told the assembled leaders, not letting myself be intimidated. “And we don’t have a better plan than hers. I say we go for it.”   
“I do, too,” said Morrigan, and Cassian turned to her with something like shock. “She’s pretty damn strong, Cass,” Morrigan said, shrugging. “Stronger than us. I don’t like sending her into it, but I believe her when she says she’s the best choice.” After a tense moment, Cassian nodded and swallowed.   
“We can drop you all in the Rainbow,” Azriel offered.   
“Sure,” I agreed. “Link hands, everyone.” I grabbed Orion’s hand behind mine, Dray’s in front.  
Just before we left, I looked up to see Clare above us, winnowing up and up and up to see the whole city.   
Then we were in the Rainbow, where there were already screams. “Go!” I yelled, not stopping to thank the winnowers. Some civilians were hiding in corners, but others were fighting-fighting with what they had, with pipes and small bits of magic.   
Without pausing, I sprinted between a shopkeeper and a male with a rapier and brought my sword down.


	26. Chapter 26

Clare  
I could hear the shouts from below. All of them on the ground, in close combat, moving towards swords and arrows and staffs that could kill them-  
They are not helpless, I reminded myself. And besides, I had a job to do.   
I winnowed up a few more times-in tiny bursts that took barely any energy. The army was close enough to see now, although still not right upon us. They were in close enough range that I could start on them now, but was the best use of my time?  
I checked the map in my mind. No, it most certainly was not.  
Taking a snapshot of the army’s proximity to the city, I winnowed onto the streets near our home.  
Four. There were four here, and all of them dropped their targets and started sprinting the instant they saw me. Go, I sent to the Fae they had been holding, and they did.   
The attackers were still running towards me. I winnowed back a few paces, then waved my hand. An inky cloud started to appear around them, purple and blue and black. They shouted in surprise when they first saw it, but were silenced when it thickened and thickened, until nothing could be seen through the darkness. Until all of it was gone.  
When the cloud evaporated, there was not a single thing left there.   
“Thank you, Lady,” a civilian said, stepping out from a doorway where she had been hiding.   
“No problem,” I told her. “Do you remember the evacuation protocol?” She nodded. “Do it, then,” I told her, then winnowed away once again.   
I rose gradually, then cursed. The army was faster than I had thought. I twisted to the edge of the city in one go this time, not several. The group was not entirely made of High Fae, but the other faeries of the Autumn Court were flightless-resembling elk and bears from the human world. Intimidating in ground combat, but flightless and without strong magic.   
One more winnow took me only a hundred yards ahead of them. I didn’t winnow again, but yanked my hand down and tugged the air into a solid platform beneath my feet. Beron wasn’t with the group, miraculously enough. I didn’t have time to worry about what he was up to.  
I took a deep breath, then pushed a palm out. Papa rarely used motions to do magic, but it worked for me when I was trying to do larger things. Before I could make anything happen, my luck ran out. A few of the soldiers happened to look up, and spotted me standing in the sky above them.  
The world splintered in front of me and turned red. A feeling like a blade twisted through my stomach, mingling with the lingering ache from my wound, but I ignored and kept pushing magic out, spreading it through every soldier standing in front of me.  
Three of Beron’s sons were there. Three potential heirs.  
And then they were not, because all that was left was a cloud of red mist, hovering thickly before me.  
I gasped and collapsed on my platform, fighting with all my might to keep it steady in the air. As I struggled for breath, I looked down at my handiwork-and my choked inhales became something akin to laughing.  
One army down. Just like that. It hadn’t been a huge one, but-still. Half of the forces were gone.  
Don’t worry about Beron’s army, I sent the Inner Circle.   
Clare, what did you do? They all sent the same thing back, one after another.  
You won’t fucking believe it, I said. I brought my knees to my chest, hugging them as I stared down at the empty field.  
My second killing. My third.   
My three hundredth.  
But I didn’t feel bad about it. They had been attacking my city, my people. For that, they deserved my fury. And any other High Lord would have done the same.  
I stood up slowly. My wound hurt. It wanted me to take it easy.  
There was a second army to deal with. No way would I be taking it easy.  
As I winnowed away from my position in short bursts, a feeling nagged at my mind. The Autumn Court, I thought, shouldn’t have been so easy. I was missing something.  
Then I heard screams from below me, right in front of the city gates. I looked down to investigate.  
At the sight, I stumbled backwards into the air and had to flail wildly to catch myself.  
I thought for a moment, my mind racing.   
There was nobody else who could handle what was down there. Not Cassian, not Mor-not Dray.  
There was only me.  
With a grunt, I spread my wings out, shuddering as the wind pushing against them felt like being sliced open anew.  
I angled myself down and started towards the situation. With every flap, I could feel the wound ripping, but I ignored it. I had to save my magic.  
My landing was not graceful, but I stayed on my feet and folded my wings in quickly, adopting a fighting stance.  
I tried not to shrink back as Beron turned towards me and grinned.  
“Your parents tied up?” he asked.  
“I’m acting High Lady,” I told him, keeping my voice low and hostile. In a diplomatic situation, I would have enjoyed arguing with him, because I would have enjoyed winning. But this was not diplomacy. This was survival, and this was Velaris.  
“All I get is you?” Beron asked. “I really would have expected a more intense opponent-Cassian, maybe. Why’d they send a child?”  
“You’ll fucking find out,” I snarled, and my hands disappeared into a cloud of smoke.  
Beron’s smirk dropped. He bared his teeth, and his palms burst into flames.


	27. Chapter 27

Dray  
As nimbly as possible, I leapt back, leaving my two opponents to frantically try and stop their swords from hitting each other. It didn’t work.  
I looked around. My block was clear, and there were no screams I could hear. Turning, I winnowed up into the sky and cast a platform of air so I could stand.  
It was clear, as far as I could see. The soldiers on the ground were standing, looking around and upwards, waiting for a new assignment.  
There was a flapping sound on my side. I turned to see Vitria flying towards me. She came to hover next to me. “The Rainbow’s clear,” she said.  
“I think-I think this is, too,” I said, looking out. “How many people did the Guard have to kill.”  
Her face was stony. “A few each.”  
“Sorry,” I said. “We all knew it would happen, but-sorry anyway.”  
Vitria shrugged. She was shorter than me, but maybe taller than Clare. Her jaw was thinner and sharper, and she was heavily freckled. “What happened with the other army?” she asked.  
“Clare told us that we didn’t have to worry about it,” I said, shrugging. “Honestly, I’m a little scared to find out what that means-”  
“But you believe her,” Vitria finished the sentence. I nodded, and she sighed, shaking her head. “She’s a High Lady,” she said, looking out at the city.  
“She’s a High Lady,” I agreed. The way we had handled this had felt right, with her in the lead, diving in and overseeing, and me just bringing my power down on her orders. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have been a leader. I just wouldn’t have been as good as her, and I didn’t want to be one at all.  
Not once throughout this whole day had I wanted to be in her position. We had made the right choice.   
“Take the Guard to Azriel’s quadrant,” I told her. “He’s in the front-he could probably use the help.” Vitria agreed and angled her body downwards, soaring back towards the bloodied streets.   
I looked back down at my quiet section and smiled. There was a fragment within me that shook at what I had just done. People down there lay dead at my hands.  
I would shake later. For now, there was a soft smile hesitantly blooming at my mouth: the knowledge that a quarter of the city was safe, and that I had made it so.  
There was no way of knowing what my sister had done. Something impossible and brilliant, I was sure. I wondered where she was-if she was on the ground in the city somewhere, or holed up recovering from however she had gotten rid of that entire army.  
I wondered where my parents were. That turned into real fear, so I winnowed quickly until I was standing beside Cassian. “You need me?” I asked. “My area is clear.”  
He was standing on the edge of a building, saving his energy as he sent bolts of energy down onto soldiers. “This isn’t too bad,” he said, “but it’ll go faster with you, I suppose.”  
I nodded and was about to head down into the thick of it when Clare’s voice burst into my head.  
I need one of you. Now.  
Cassian turned to me. He had heard it too. “I’m going,” I said, echoing it mentally so everyone else heard. He nodded and turned back to his landscape, picking people off one by one.  
I twisted my mind forward through her speech until I found her location, just outside the front gates. In one burst, I winnowed into a spot a few feet away from her.  
At the sight, I might have gasped-I might have screamed. Clare did not look back at me. She was too busy fighting Beron.  
They were both bent low, circling each other. Beron’s ponytail was loose, and fangs were visible over his lips, and his eyes were twisted and deranged as he flicked his wrist and a flame darted towards Clare. She bent out of the way, firing back a cloud of dark smoke. I could see a wince in her eyes with the movement-she was hurt, she should not be moving like this. Her face was firm and unmoving, completely focused. There was no laughter in her eyes.  
That scared me. There was always laughter in her eyes. When she had woken up after being kidnapped, there had been a spark in the back. Now the slate blue was hard and ice cold.  
She was a High Lady, and it was a good thing, too.  
“Dray,” she gasped, and I looked around to see four Autumn Court soldiers encroaching. I could have laughed. She had not called for help fighting Beron-she had called for help with Beron’s guards.  
I winnowed to them one by one and struck them down, each with a different gift. Water, light, ice, and shadow.  
Clare bent low and sent a lick of ink to wrap across Beron’s ankles. He howled at the pain and bent to burn them off. As he ducked down, Clare pushed a force into his back, and he bent, twisting to the side to send two more fireballs her way. She grunted and stumbled back as one of them caught her in the side. With a hand there, she sent her limited water power, and it was out, leaving a singed hole in her shirt where you could see the now-red skin. I winced at the sight. The wound was right where the fireball had struck, and it was wet and ragged and all kinds of wrong.  
That pain must have been terrible, but once the fire was out, my sister didn’t stop for a second. Beron was low to the ground, and she took the opportunity to send quick strikes towards his head, forcing strands in his ears and up his nose. He choked, bending upwards to gasp for air-only to receive a violet coil wrapped around his neck, squeezing and singeing until it burst into nothingness at a snap of Clare’s fingers.  
She stepped closer to him. His hands glowed yellow and green and blue, and he reached them up and slammed them onto her shoulders. Clare gasped, shuddering despite herself, and I leaned forward, but she recovered too quickly. Before I could do anything, she had grabbed both his wrists and twisted them in front of him. With a quick wave of her hand, a smoky chain wrapped around Beron’s wrists and ankles. He struggled, sending flames out into the bonds, heating Clare’s skin as she worked so that she bit her lip in pain, but they held fast.  
Clare stepped back, keeping her focus, and I stood, dumbstruck. Had she-had she really just beaten a High Lord?  
Then she stumbled, and my wits returned. I ran forward and caught her, putting an arm at her waist, being careful to avoid her wound. She leaned into me, gripping both my shoulders, her breaths fast and shallow. But she kept her concentration, and the bonds held solid.  
“How long were you fighting him?” I asked.  
“Twenty minutes,” she breathed. She was hot, and her clothes were torn, and I was worried-but more than that, I was amazed.  
“Can you get-chains for him?” she asked, closing her eyes for a minute, and I realized what that number meant. Twenty minutes-we never had twenty minutes of uninterrupted fighting, not without a single break or change of target. No one opponent took that long.  
I twisted my mind into the city. I need chains at the gates. Now, I said. We stood there for a moment. She leaned further and further into me, but she kept her chin strong, her eyes sparkling on the bonds, which did not waver for a moment.  
A minute later, Mor appeared, chains looped around her arms. She saw Beron and instantly paled, but recovered her composure as she took in the bonds. Then she registered Clare next to me, and her eyes widened as she understood.  
“Where’s your army?” she asked Beron as she walked towards him.  
“They’ll be here in minutes,” he said, snarling. “And you’ll be dead, bitch.”  
“You need to come up with a new insult,” she said, although she bit her lip.  
“They won’t,” Clare said, barely audible. We all turned to her, and she continued. “They won’t be here. I misted them.”  
Beron’s face-I would give up half my fortune to see that face again.  
I looked at Clare again. She was still hot, but shivering now. Her blood had soaked onto me. As she looked up and saw my face, her exhale turned into a chuckle of disbelief.  
Mor started wrapping the chains around Beron’s wrists. He struggled, but Clare held firm, gripping my forearm to steady herself. “Ready,” Mor said once the chains were secure.  
The dark bonds evaporated, and Clare stumbled back a few paces, closing her eyes. Then she recovered and stood up, gently shrugging off my grasp and taking a few wobbly steps forward herself. I stayed close behind, ready to catch her. She went slowly, but did not fall.  
In front of Beron, she paused. They stared at each other for a moment. The old and the new-coming and going.  
“Imagine what I’ll be like as a High Lady,” was all Clare said, and I laughed. It was so funny, how she never seemed to lose herself. Even in a moment like this, she was the same person I had played pranks with the day before.  
“Bitch,” said Beron again, although it seemed weaker this time.  
Clare stepped towards me, and I took her weight again. Mor suggested we bring Beron to a holding pen deep in the House of Wind, and we both agreed.  
Then, as we took the step forward to winnow, I saw a flash of movement out of my eye, and I moved.  
I don’t regret it. Clare was shaking with the effort required to breathe beside me. She had beaten a High Lord and destroyed an entire army. She deserved all the protection I could give her.  
But in that moment, I would have given everything I had to avoid the feeling that spread through me when I found myself twisted into a lunge, a dagger plunged into Beron’s heart.


	28. Chapter 28

Clare  
When he moved, he stopped supporting me, and my senses shut down as I battled to stay upright.  
It took a moment before I could hear again, and the first noise was small and choked, coming from him.  
Then my sight returned, and I saw the knife, and the bloody silk shirt, and the body slowly folding to the ground.  
Dray let the knife fall out of his hand with the corpse. He stood above it, paralyzed, staring at nothing.  
I looked down at the body and saw that Beron had been holding a knife, too. His stance flashed into my mind, and I gasped, realizing where that blade would have landed. “Thank you,” I said to Dray, who didn’t seem to hear me.  
Mor moved first, taking Dray gently by the shoulders and leading him over towards me. I took his hand and nodded to Mor as she moved to prop me up. My legs were wobbling, and my blood seemed too hot. But I didn’t notice any of that as I stared at my brother, and as he stared at the ground.  
“I’m glad,” Mor said from behind us, but she sounded scared. None of us minded that Beron was dead, but we had killed a High Lord. None of us knew what came after that.  
Then something tore through the air, and suddenly Eris was there.  
Mor stepped back, still holding me upright. Dray shrank too, nearly hyperventilating, moving his hands like he was trying to drop the knife over and over.  
Eris looked down at the body on the ground, and then back up. None of us were shocked by the rage in his eyes, but Mor’s throat clenched-she had seen that anger before, she had taken that anger before. Dray was still trying to get smaller.  
I stepped forward, biting my lower lip at the pain. Mor hissed my name, but I didn’t turn back. The three steps were arduous, but Eris met me in the center. Soon, we both stood over the body.  
His eyes struck me like steel. “You’ve murdered a High Lord. Do you have any idea what the punishment for that is?”  
“We have done no such thing,” I told him, and his eyes widened, incredulous. I pulled a staff from my back and leaned on it like a cane before I spoke.  
“Your father imprisoned our parents, and Helion, which is a crime itself. Then he attacked Velaris-and you did too, for that matter. By law, we’re allowed to fight back. Any casualties are just part of the battle.  
“But we weren’t going to kill him. We fought him, and I won, and we were chaining him up when he pulled a knife. If he hadn’t tried to stab me, he would still be alive.”  
Dray stiffened slightly at the words. I hadn’t confirmed which one of us had struck the blow, and I wasn’t going to. He wasn’t ready to take that heat.  
I looked up at Eris, fighting to keep my breath steady. My hands and feet were starting to get fuzzy, and the wound in my side was screaming. I needed for this to be over.  
“We haven’t committed a crime,” I told Eris. “Now, I’m sure there’s going to be some upheaval in your court, and we need to recover from this fight. Let’s discuss this later.  
“Go mourn your father, Eris,” I said when he still didn’t move. At the pulsing line in his jaw, I softened. That was grief. “I’m sorry for your loss.”  
When he looked down at me, there was nothing but contempt in his expression, but he bent to pick up Beron’s body and winnowed away without a word.  
I sank instantly into Mor’s shoulder as she came to catch me, but I turned to Dray, who stumbled forward. “We’ll deal with this later,” I told him. “When Mama and Papa are back.”  
On cue, a thought shattered into my mind. It wasn’t loud, but it hurt, because it was being broadcast on only the thinnest possible strand of magic.  
We’re out. Drained, but not badly hurt. Was there an attack?  
I closed my eyes and laughed. Dimly, I felt Dray’s message echo in reply: Yes, but it’s over. We’ll tell you more when you get home.  
Wings rustled as Cassian and Azriel landed next to us. “The forces in the city are taken care of,” Cassian said. “Where’s that Autumn Court army we heard about?”  
“I misted them earlier,” I told him. “Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t mention Beron. Dray still seemed like he was about to shatter.  
“It’s done,” Azriel rasped. I felt him switch places with Mor to take my weight. He was bigger and more solid.  
I lifted my chin to look at the gates we were standing near, and the city behind them. It was quiet, shell-shocked.  
It was done.  
Mor and Cassian whooped as they realized, and even Dray managed an exhale of relief. I smiled, leaning further into Az. The warm sun felt almost like the magic I had used up.  
Then I heard wings beating above us, too fast to be good news. I lifted my head to see Vitria diving towards the ground, landing hard in a cloud of dirt. “What’s wrong?” Cassian asked.  
“We’re almost clear,” Vitria said, her speech quick and sloppy. “But-Thomas.”  
Every ounce of warmth I was feeling turned to ice. “What?” I asked, hoisting myself up straight.  
“The Palace of Bone and Salt,” Vitria told me. “There were twelve of them, and they barricaded themselves in with him. He already sent out the distress signal, but it’ll take us too long to get in-”  
I stepped forward, out of Azriel’s grasp. The chorus of warning voices behind me didn’t register.  
As I grasped within myself for those tiny strands of magic, I looked at Vitria’s face. She nodded to me solemnly. She didn’t know about the rest of it.  
The threads were thinner than I had ever felt, but there were a few of them. I wrenched them together, ignoring the pain, and braided them until they were thick enough to register.  
Then, with a twist that made me scream, I ripped the strand apart and let the explosion fling me into the nothingness of winnowing.   
A minute later, I found myself falling hard onto the wooden floor of the palace. It was dark, the lanterns having been knocked over long ago. My hands had landed close to shards of glass, and I pulled myself up carefully to avoid them. Every inch of me shook with the effort, but that exhaustion seemed very far away from my mind now. I stood and began to stumble forwards.  
He was at the end of the floor we were on, by the windows. Bodies lay in his wake-I quickly counted eight, and my heart swelled. But the remaining four still circled around him, pinning him against the wall, and he was pale, and there was so much blood soaked into his leathers that the unstained sections seemed like the new color.  
My staff was still in my hand from earlier, and I switched to a two-handed grip because it was all I had the strength for.  
Then I ran for him, and screamed, and brought the staff down across the chest of the closest enemy.


	29. Chapter 29

Thomas  
The soldier she had hit yelled, flailing out with his sword as he fell back. She sidestepped the blow and slammed her staff against the back of his head, then stepped back as he crashed to the ground. But I saw how stiff her steps were, how awkward her stance was after the last hit. She was hurting, and badly.  
I took advantage of the distraction to slice across the abdomen of a second, sending him to the floor. A third rushed to engage me, and I parried and lunged, twisting to the side to avoid his last desperate strike as he fell too. Clare ducked under an attack, then leaned upwards to strike. Shoulder, then neck, and the last one was down.  
Silence fell, and not the pulsing silence between two battles, but true silence, the heavy kind. Clare stumbled to me, and we leaned against each other and the wall in equal measure. I could feel how weak she was, and it had my heart pounding again. Something big had happened out there.  
“Is it over?” I asked, my voice barely audible. She just nodded, keeping her eyes closed. Her braid was still tight on top of her head, but the ends of it had started to fly out. I stroked the top of her head gently.  
Then I stumbled, groaning in spite of myself, and her face sharpened as she turned to me. “You were hurt?” she asked, and this time it was me with the closed-eye nod. I had been stabbed early in the fight, and it was getting worse.  
“Thank you,” I said, looking over the dark room, the corpses on the floor.  
“Always,” she replied, and pressed closer to me.   
I winced as a crash sounded through the room, overwhelming my senses. My arm reached across Clare’s shoulders, pulling her closer, but in the next moment she was being gently tugged away. I opened my eyes to see Vitria looping her arms under Clare’s shoulders, the sun shining so brightly onto her that it made me squint. She had crashed through the window. Only the shield that had been put up had stopped her from doing it sooner.  
Vitria nodded to me before hoisting Clare up and jumping through the window, spreading her wings to coast down once she was outside. Magnus came to my side and put an arm around my waist. I let him lead me as I stumbled to the window. Then, with a quiet grunt, he leapt. I closed my eyes, not looking, as we coasted to the ground too.  
The next thing I knew, I was lying on a stretcher on the ground, and the entire Inner Circle was gathered around me. Only the High Lord and Lady were missing. Dray looked paler than I had ever seen him, but they were all standing.  
“Thank you for your service, Thomas,” Cassian said, leaning down to salute me. I tried to return the motion, but moving my arm made my entire body flare. “Don’t worry about it,” Cassian said hastily. I nodded with some difficulty and turned my head.  
Clare was on a stretcher next to me, her eyes closed. The only visible blood on her was a thin line, exactly where the wound from the kidnapping had been. She had opened it again. Apart from that, her body seemed whole, but the exhaustion in the way she lay went beyond normal sleep. I shuddered to think of what she had done.  
A sound began to ring through the square, jolting me back to alert. After a moment, I realized that it was clapping. Citizens had begun to gather, huddled together but unharmed, and they applauded us and the group around us. The sound echoed through the air.  
I might have smiled; I really don’t know. But even with the noise, the next jolt of pain was enough to shock my mind into darkness.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope you're still enjoying this!! You probably won't be after this chapter!!!

Cassian  
Only a few minutes after we watched Clare and Thomas be carted away to the healers, I heard my High Lord’s voice echoing through my head.  
We’re in the townhouse. Come and brief us.  
I grabbed Mor’s hand, and a moment later we were in the dining room, and they were sitting at the table. Both were disheveled and pale and breathing hard, but they sat up straight and smiled as we walked in. Something in my chest eased.  
The smiles slipped away almost as soon as they had appeared. “What happened?” Rhys asked.  
“You first,” I told him, sitting across the table. Mor and Azriel sat next to me. We hadn’t gone to get Amren, but I expected her to arrive soon.  
“He winnowed out, and then it started,” said Feyre. “First there were soldiers of his, waves of them. Once we got past those, there were wards and shields and all sorts of bullshit.”  
“They didn’t account for the Cursebreaker,” Rhys said proudly, and I rolled my eyes. “It was draining,” he continued, “but not too bad. Helion helped, and then went back to his palace.”  
“We were attacked by two forces at once,” I said, and smiled grimly at the shock that rushed over their faces. “The same group as last time, and Beron’s army.”  
“Lucien’s in the library with Elain,” Mor added.  
“Clare acted as High Lady,” I continued, and watched another wave of panic. “We took our sections of the city-Dray took yours, Feyre-and we handled the group in the city. While we were doing that, Clare misted the entirety of Beron’s army and beat him one-on-one.”  
They gaped. I raised my eyebrows. “You’ve got the right heir,” I told them.  
“Beron’s dead,” Mor said. “Clare beat him, but while were chaining him up, he tried to stab her, and Dray… reacted. He’s not handling it very well.”  
“He wouldn’t,” Feyre murmured.  
“So, that’s it?” Rhys asked. “Two armies, and it’s over before we get here?”  
“The fight’s over,” I agreed. “But…” Rhys stood up, his hands on the table, reading my face correctly.  
“Thomas was trapped in the Palace of Bone and Salt with the last dregs of them,” I said. “When Clare heard, she winnowed to him-on nothing, on less than it takes to make your fingertips light up. They both got out, but they’re at the healers, and I haven’t heard yet-”  
Before I could finish the sentence, Feyre and Rhys had gripped each other’s hands and vanished from the room.  
I sighed and turned to Mor, suddenly feeling how tired I was. It hadn’t been the worst battle of my life, but it was still an all-day fight.  
The door slammed open as Amren walked in. Her gray eyes glinted like a blade.  
“Will someone please tell me what the fuck happened down there with Beron?” she said.  
Despite everything, I started laughing.  
Rhys  
I landed on the floor of the healer’s in a frenzy, Feyre at my arm. It was chaos inside, moans and directions and fast-moving workers rushing around us. We wove forward, shoving our way through, until we found the desk.  
“My daughter?” I asked. The clerk paled as she looked up at me.  
“In that corner,” she said, and I swore as I followed her pointed finger. I couldn’t even see the bed, there were so many healers gathered around it. We pushed through until we reached the crowd, then bore through that.  
She was unconscious on the bed. The top of her leathers had been cut off to reveal the wound from before, viciously ripped open. A rib near it was bent in an odd way, and her entire abdomen was shades of purple and green.  
Some of those bruises had come from the fight, but some of them had to be from exhaustion. Her last winnow, Cassian had said, had been with impossibly low reserves. Without enough power, the gift ripped into your body instead. I had only been forced to winnow with that little magic once before-during the first war. It was an experience I never wanted to repeat.  
“How is she?” Feyre asked the healers, who moved around us as if we were rocks in a river.  
Not stopping, one of them replied: “Judging by how she did last time, I think she’ll be alright.”  
“Hey!” someone shouted from a few feet away. We shuffled back a few steps to make room for the exodus. Only a few stayed with Clare, the rest rushing to the bed next to her, which held-  
“Shit,” I whispered.  
It was Thomas, and his lips were blue. Feyre grabbed my hand and squeezed it, and we both looked back at Clare’s sleeping face. To have a mate that badly hurt-we knew what it meant, for both of them.  
I saw a glow, then another and another, as the healers pressed their hands down on Thomas one by one. “There must have been poison on the blade,” one of them said. Desperately, he stuck his hand into the stab wound, but blood just kept coming up, and the blue pallor was spreading across Thomas’s face-  
“What about my gift?” Feyre asked, hands shaking.  
“Come in and try it,” a healer said, just as panicked. Feyre pressed through the group and put her hands on top of the wounds. Clenching her jaw, her palms began to glow, but it was only a few seconds before she pulled away with a gasp.  
“I can’t touch it,” she said. “I can’t touch anything.”  
A healer shoved her hard as he moved to fill her spot, and didn’t apologize as he put his hands where hers had been. The glow got brighter and brighter, filling the room. Feyre didn’t move back to me, but stayed near the scene, rubbing her shoulder and running her teeth along her lip again and again. I drummed my fingers against my thighs, my eyes wider than was natural as I watched the magic be poured into his body. It kept glowing, blindingly bright, and still the healers pushed frantically, and still we waited without breathing-  
Then one of them yanked his hands back, dropping them. There was disgust and rage in the movement, and I knew what had happened.  
“No,” I whispered.  
They started to move back, one by one. Their steps were slow and shuffling, their heads bowed. Feyre stepped past them towards the bed.  
“No,” I said again, louder this time.  
Slowly, painfully, the healers began to move away to other beds. The sightline cleared until I could see it all.  
He lay there, blood pooled across his abdomen and chest and down to his thighs. His face was still blue, his hands still loosely balled into fists.  
He did not breathe.  
I didn’t have to say the word again. It clanged in my head, loud enough to be excruciating. Feyre ran to me, and I pressed her close. It took us a moment to convince ourselves that it was not the other in that bed.  
Then, slowly, we both turned to Clare.  
She still slept, more peacefully now. Her braid was tight on top of her head, but gave way to loose curls under her neck. There were still a few healers moving around her, grim-faced after what they had just seen.  
A choked sound came out of my mouth as I looked down at her. Feyre looked to me, shaking her head.  
Clare’s mate was dead.  
“I don’t know how she does this,” I whispered. Feyre opened her mouth, trying to think of a positive spin, but after a moment she closed it again. There was nothing positive to be said. There was no hope to be had.  
Clare had misted an entire army. She had beaten Beron, the oldest High Lord, in single combat, and I was sure she had done it with witticisms and flourishes thrown into every step.  
But her next challenge would be a hundred times worse.  
My legs were numb and hard to move, but I did it anyway. “We have to tell the others,” I said, my voice sounding very far away.  
“Okay,” said Feyre, looking just as lost.  
We tore ourselves away, watching Clare all the while.  
She did not know what was to come.


	31. Chapter 31

Mor  
We were all in the kitchen when Rhys and Feyre winnowed back, and their faces were grim and haunted enough that I thought something might have happened to Clare.  
Every one of us turned, staring at them. Feyre gulped before she spoke, keeping her eyes on the ground.  
“Clare’s going to be fine. Thomas is dead.”  
We looked at each other, and then back at them.  
“Shit,” we said as one.  
Dray  
It was four in the morning the next day, the black-blue sky starting to give way to navy on the horizon. I sat in a hard chair in a silent room, watching my sister breathe.  
The quiet was heavy and ethereal. None of the events of the previous day had quite registered yet. I still felt that knife in my hand, though. It wasn’t the weight of the body that haunted me, but the weight of the crown atop its head.  
I had slaughtered a High Lord. And I would have given almost anything to get that burden off my shoulders.  
But that weight ripped instantly from my mind when I saw Clare’s eyes flutter open.  
“Hi,” I said, leaning down.  
“It’s over?” she asked, closing her eyes again.  
“It’s over,” I confirmed.  
She looked up at me, her eyes narrowing with the effort. They were more blue than gray, the silver spark used up. Even in that state, though, she read my face. “What happened?” she asked, so quiet that I could barely hear her.  
I didn’t want to be the one to say it. My other burden seemed infinitely lighter now that I was staring this one in the face.  
But I remembered how she had made Eris think she had killed Beron. Without even thinking about it, she had taken that from me.  
“Clare, Thomas died,” I said, and my voice was soft and steady. My hand was already on top of hers, and I didn’t move it. I kept my body frozen, waiting to see what would happen.  
Her eyes snapped away from mine, onto the ceiling.  
“Get out,” she said quietly.  
“Clare, I’m so sorry,” I told her, the shakiness rushing out now. I could feel dampness in the corners of my eyes as I watched her face shift, the news sinking in.  
“Get out,” she said again, only this time it was as loud as a command on the battlefield. Her hand turned to a claw under mine, her nails dug into my palm, and in one move she pulled herself upwards until she tumbled into me, sending the chair rocking wildly back.  
One look at her face and I had pushed her back onto the bed and winnowed out as fast as my magic could take me.  
Mama and Papa were waiting for me, and they caught me as I stumbled into my room. “What happened?” Papa asked. “Should I-”  
“Go,” I choked, and with a look at Mama he was out of the room.  
I let Mama lead me to sink down onto the side of my bed, and I let her arms stay wrapped around my shoulders as I cried.  
Clare  
Dray’s touch had been poison, searing spite, a vile attempt to make up for the words he spoke.  
Then Papa came, all in a rush, his face fused with worry. He pulled his arms around me, and I know I was screaming and sobbing. But I couldn’t feel the noise escaping my throat. I couldn’t feel his embrace.  
All I could feel was the empty space.


	32. Chapter 32

Feyre  
I sat with Dray for hours, and we drank tea and talked about the events of the day, our conversation stilted by the one we knew our counterparts were having.  
Eventually, he went up to bed. I took a bath and then walked out onto the balcony off our room. The lights in the city were different than usual-some areas were more brightly lit, extra lamps having brought in for repairs, and some areas were still dark and damaged.  
Rhys walked out onto the balcony a few minutes later. He hadn’t changed or paused since we had gotten home, and his clothes were still dirty and smelled of smoke. His face was frozen and distant, his eyes sunken. Without a word, he sat and leaned into me, then gave a shuddering sigh.  
“She’s asleep,” he eventually said. When he was in a special amount of pain, his eyes turned darker, a mix of purple and black, and they would start to shimmer as a thin film of water fell over them. I watched that glint and put an arm around his shoulders.  
“It’s not fair,” I said out to the air, my words taut. There was no point in saying it, it didn’t change anything, but watching the anger hang in front of us let my chest ease a tiny bit.  
“I’m so tired,” Rhys murmured, closing his eyes. “And I’m scared for her.”  
We had begun the day wary, knowing we were walking into a trap. We had braced ourselves for an all-out assault on the city, to come back and see scores of our citizens dead. The real punishment, the pain we had ended up with at the end of the day, was infinitely worse.  
“We’ll get her through it,” I told Rhys, feeling weariness tugging at my bones. I was close to drained, having broken layer after layer of wards at Helion’s palace. I couldn’t wait to sleep. Maybe I would wake up and this entire day would just be a nightmare.  
I hoped.  
Vitria  
The Guard and I met in the training center three days later. Some of us walked; some were carried. We gathered into a circle on the bare floor, the same as we did before every practice, and then just stared at each other for a long time.  
Finally, we turned to Thomas’s office door. Magnus spoke, his voice thick with tears.  
“Salute.”  
We shuffled into formation and saluted as one, our eyes on the brass nameplate above that door. Then we stood in silence again, the minutes ticking by, the quiet so heavy it felt impossible to break.  
Eventually, they looked to me, and I realized that it was my job to say what came next.  
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to stand tall. “I’ll tell you.”  
They nodded, murmured agreements. I broke from the group to creep out of the hall.  
The moment I was out, I pushed off the ground and soared above the city. I picked a direction and hurtled forward, the wind tearing through my hair and across my cheeks.  
I did not slow down, and I did not get home until sunset.

In the week after the battle, I flew like that almost every day, as fast as my wings could take me. I trained too, but in small, dimly lit classes in corners of the city where nobody knew my name, where I was just an anonymous Illyrian who left every class with her teeth clenched together.  
Sometimes, I would visit the healing complex to see Clare, but I never approached her. She was always awake when I would come, staring up at the ceiling with an expression on her face that I had never seen before the battle. Someone from her family, or from the Inner Circle, was always sitting in a chair next to her bed, watching her as she studiously ignored them. Her hands were folded neatly over her chest; her body was still, which, if you knew Clare, was unheard of. She would sometimes close her eyes for a minute, and you would feel like you were watching a star implode, and then she would open them again and look back at the ceiling as if nothing had changed.  
I went on like that for a week, drifting from place to place, trying not to be caught in any one. It wasn’t that I was overwhelmed by grief; I was grieving, but still functioning. My problem was that without Thomas, I didn’t know if the Guard still existed, and I had a sick feeling that it was my decision and my problem to solve.  
My other problem was that my best friend apparently hadn’t spoken in a week.  
But one day, when I was coming out of a vicious hand-to-hand class held in a dingy basement facility, I heard a feathery voice in my head.  
Can you help me with something?  
Five minutes later, I was sitting in that wooden chair by the bed, and Clare was sitting on the side of it, her legs dangling. There was a cane in her hands, and she held it loosely, letting it tip to one side before righting it again.  
“Hi,” I said. She looked up at me, and my breath caught at the pain I saw in her eyes. “Clare, I’m so sorry-”  
She shook her head wearily, and I shut my mouth. We had known each other for too long for those words to matter.  
“What do you need?” I asked instead. When she spoke, her voice was a shadow of its former self.  
“I’ve been cleared to go home, but… I can’t. I have to get out of the city. So I was going to go up to the House of Wind-there’s magic there that can take care of me. Could you pack me some stuff and bring it up there?”  
“Sure,” I said. “What kind of things do you want?”  
“I don’t care,” she told me, and her glance asked me not to make her think about it. I nodded instantly.  
“Thanks,” she said with a sigh. Bracing herself on the cane, she pushed herself up to stand. I put a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and she wobbled but didn’t fall. She was taller than me, but didn’t seem like it.  
Before she could protest, I wrapped my arms around her and stayed there for a while. She didn’t move away.  
Eventually, I pulled back and looked at her. “What comes next?” I asked, because she had always been the one who knew.  
She shook her head, looking impossibly tired. “Something, maybe,” she said, then bit her lip. “Maybe. No. I don’t know.”  
Before she could spin out further, she twisted into a ripple of gray and was gone.  
I walked out of the healing complex and through the city to her house. I had a key to her balcony door, so I went in that way. Soon, I was in her room, looking around at her things-the huge bed and stuffed bookshelf, the dressers overflowing with papers piled on top and clothes thrown below.  
It had been a long time since we had spent time in this room, I realized. Not since before the first battle. I had visited while she was healing, but that didn’t count. And then she had been busy being heir, and I had let her be, knowing it would slow down eventually.  
Now, I didn’t know when-or if-we would be in this room again, the way we had been before the world had suddenly gotten sharp and dangerous.  
I started rooting through her dressers, piling clothes on the bed that I thought she might want. She hadn’t said how long she planned to stay at the House of Wind, but I expected it might be a while. Mostly, I packed clothes to recover in, but there were a few other things as well-a few formal outfits, in case she had work to do, and a dress that she could wear to a funeral.  
Just as I was finishing with the clothes, Dray walked in and looked at me, a thousand questions on his face.  
“She’s going up to the House of Wind,” I told him. She hadn’t said whether it was a secret or not, but her family wouldn’t have been able to handle not knowing. “She got cleared to go home today, and she asked me to pack.”  
Dray blinked a few times before walking over. He reached under the bed and pulled a trunk that I hadn’t seen out. “How was she?” he asked as he picked up a shirt to fold.  
“The same,” I said quietly. “She left-she went up there. I think she’s right about going.”  
“I think so too,” he told me, “but I wish I didn’t.”


	33. Chapter 33

Clare  
I was right and wrong about going. I was wrong, because it didn’t lift the crippling, all-consuming weight off my shoulders or my lungs. But I was right, because once I was up there, I couldn’t even fathom the idea of going back down.  
Vitria delivered my things, and then unpacked them, and then made us both tea and sat to drink it with me, even though I didn’t say a word.  
“Tell your parents,” she said before she left, “or Dray and I will.” It wasn’t a threat, it was just two options.  
It took me an hour, but I eventually managed to tell them.  
I’m at the House of Wind. Healers cleared me to be up here alone.  
I felt the first dregs of Papa’s response within seconds, but they were pulled back, and the real reply came through a minute later:  
Is it okay if we come up to check on you? Say, once a day?  
I don’t care, I replied, because there was no way I could say Sounds good.  
After a moment, I winnowed through the twisting levels of the house and up to a flat balcony on the roof.   
The sky seemed close and heavy. I looked down past the property and to the city, which was tiny and glittering below.  
In that moment, I wished that my eyes weren’t as good as they were. I wished that I had never studied a map of the city. Because even from here, I could pick out the training center. I could pick out his house.  
I looked up to the sky, threatening to wrap itself around me.  
I opened my mouth and screamed until my breath gave out.  
Feyre  
Dray and Rhys and I went up that evening.  
We walked around for a while, getting more and more nervous as we were unable to find her. Finally, Rhys thought to look on the roof.  
There was a spindly table on the balcony up there, and she sat in one of the chairs around it. She was taking shallow breaths, her eyes narrow. The breaths of someone in many, many kinds of pain.  
Rhys’s breath caught, and I put a hand on his shoulder. Clare heard the sound. She turned to us and glared, but there had been just as much anger in her eyes when she had been looking out at the sky. We stood for a minute more before winnowing out.  
The Inner Circle met us, and we went out to this little bakery and sat there until it closed. It would have been a nice evening, and a remarkably peaceful one considering the events of the week before, but it wasn’t.  
Rhys and I took a while before going up to bed. As soon as the light turned off and I was lying still in the dark, my mind filled to the brim with that image. My girl, on top of that house, suffering and alone. From the way Rhys’s arm tightened around me, I knew he saw the same thing.  
That night, two dreams woke me up. The first was a classic of Rhys being tortured, and I was able to calm myself by watching him and listening to him breathe.  
But in the second, I watched Clare in that chair on the balcony, bent and frozen with pain. As I watched, wrinkles began to appear on her face. Her hair turned silver. Her clothes began to sag off her frame. Still she looked out, not moving or caring. I screamed, trying to get her to turn and look at us, to see how much we still loved her, but she kept her eyes glued to that horizon until she sunk into her bones and her light went out.  
There was no calm to be had after that one.


	34. Chapter 34

Dray  
Over the next few weeks, we all settled into as much of a routine as we could. I started spending more time with Magnus, sparring and seeing shows and even going out at night, which I had rarely done before. I studied more, too-partially to fill the days that were always too long, and partially because of a small and terrifying voice saying that my sister was not going to reclaim her post. That wasn’t an idea I could think about, but I prepared anyway. There was nothing else to do.  
Mama and Papa went up to the house every day. At first, I went with them every time, but eventually I started only going a few times a week. We had always had a strong mental connection, and if I tried, I could feel her mind against mine. I could tell that she was alive. For our parents, that was not enough. They needed to physically see her in order to stay calm enough to function. But for me, seeing her blank, furrowed stares and pursed lips and pallor just worried me more. It was better just to know that she wasn’t dead, and to leave the rest empty.  
One late morning, I was in the sitting room with Mor and Cassian and Amren, discussing some trivial details of the rebuilding plan. I was about to go out to lunch, but I had become slow to get out of the house, because I no longer particularly cared whether I left or not.  
Suddenly, with a rust-colored flash, Eris and two other Fae were standing in front of us.  
Automatically, without thinking about it, my mind took a picture of the situation and pushed it out. I barely noticed where it was going over the rush of fear, white gauze over my vision.   
“Drakon,” Eris said, using my full name. He was dressed well, standing firmly, but there were scrapes on his cheeks and a bruise under his eye. We hadn’t yet heard word of who was High Lord of his court. Evidently, the fight was not yet over.  
“Who are your friends, Eris?” Amren asked. Her voice was calm, but her hands were balled into fists by her side. Mor and Cassian said nothing-the former was likely scared, the latter too angry to form a coherent thought.  
“My father’s advisors,” said Eris, looking directly at me. “We want to investigate the circumstances of his death, see if it was legal.”  
“Of course it was legal,” Cassian spat, no longer able to hold back. ‘You attacked our city first.”  
Eris wasn’t good enough of an actor to keep his face completely still, but the only movement was a flicker of an eyebrow before the mask returned. “That may be so, but there are specific rules concerning the death of a High Lord. If those rules were broken, we have the right to take Dray as a prisoner-”  
“You’re not taking Dray as anything,” Mor told him. “Rhys and Feyre will kill you if you do.” She and the others shifted, slowly but obviously, until they were slightly in front of me.  
This time, Eris stayed still, having expected that threat. “We still have the right to interrogate-”  
Cued, beckoned, subconsciously prayed for, she spun into the room.  
She was wearing a gray blouse and black pants. Her hair was damp, as if it had just been washed, but the front part was neatly twisted back from her face. I willed my face to remain calm, but my eyes couldn’t help but widen. Only Amren concealed her shock with any effectiveness.  
“Eris,” Clare said. And as she walked towards him, a hint of her subtle swagger was back, and there was a small smile on her lips. Not the normal one, broad and welcoming with a touch of arrogance, but still.  
“Lady Clare,” Eris said, bowing his head stiffly. “We came to interrogate Drakon about the death of my father, as is our right-”  
“Of course, you have a right to investigate,” Clare agreed. “I’m free for the rest of the day. You can ask me whatever you like.”  
Eris paused for a moment, his nostrils flaring as he regrouped. I bit my lip to keep myself from smiling-or from sobbing, I wasn’t sure. Five seconds, and she had thrown him off his game.  
“We heard a rumor, my lady, that you were not the one who struck the killing blow, and we would like-”  
Clare took another step forward, her face serene and her eyes heavy-lidded as she looked up at him. “No, I wasn’t,” she said. “Dray took the blow. But I was in combat with him for much longer, and I was inches away from him when he died. By law, you could use either of us, and we’re picking me.”  
I had shrunk back at her admission, as Eris whipped his head up to glare at me. But he had quickly been drawn back to Clare, his mouth parted slightly.   
I had met both of the legal advisors briefly before, and Mama and Papa had talked about them a few times. They would be unbiased only if it was the only reasonable option. Any declarations for others were given grudgingly and as a last resort.  
It was well-known that, while both of Rhysand and Feyre’s children were powerful and fairly capable, Clare was better at persuading and manipulating people. I was quiet and shy and tripped over my words when I was nervous. Eris had likely found out, somehow, that Clare was spending less time with us than usual-nobody in the city knew where she was, but her absence was conspicuous-and visited in the hopes that I would be the witness, and that I would say something to spin the events against my favor.  
Instead, he was forced to mutter that it was fine. Her eyes clear and posture excellent, Clare suggested a meeting room and led them out. She walked slowly, with a slight limp, but without hesitation.  
A moment later, Mama and Papa burst through the door, their eyes wild. Mama rushed to me, but then they both froze, sensing who had been there a moment before. “What the hell happened?” Papa asked.  
My lips stayed closed. Amren spoke after a moment. “Eris came to interrogate Dray about Beron’s death. He was putting pressure on us, and then Clare stormed in and offered herself as a witness.”  
“How was she?” Mama asked, eyes wide.  
“Full High Lady mode,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, I’m sure it was an act, but… she put on the act, and she was convincing enough for him.”  
“You should go, though,” said Cassian. “Some support during the interrogation.”  
After a moment of discussion, they both hurried in the direction Clare and Eris had gone.  
I fell back onto the couch, still watching the door.  
I can’t make it today, I told Magnus. Something came up.

That day passed in a haze of reading and clipped sentences. Azriel came in halfway through the day. We rarely left that one sitting room.  
In the late afternoon, the door suddenly swung open again. This time, Clare leaned on Papa’s arm as she walked into the room. This time, her eyes were still clear as she looked at me, but a hint of the edge I had seen in the House of Wind was back. This time, all traces of bravado were gone, and she just looked tired.  
I knew that Eris was gone.  
“You’ve been declared innocent,” she confirmed, and I shuddered. The weight of relief was just as heavy as the anxiety, but infinitely easier to carry.  
“Thank you,” I said. There was a gap between us now. We had never gone this long without speaking before.  
Every time, she saved me. Even now.  
“Clare, what are you… what are you going to do now?” Mor asked.  
“I came because this is my situation,” Clare said, looking around at all of us. “I fought Beron; I beat him. Whatever the details of the last blow may be, it’s my situation to handle.”  
“You’re welcome to,” Papa said quietly. “But what does this mean, that you did this?”  
“I don’t know,” Clare said, stepping out of his grasp. She looked around the room, seeming lost. At first, I thought she was going to step towards me, but instead she took a step and winnowed, disappearing as quickly as she had come.


	35. Chapter 35

Rhys  
I winnowed up to the house at four in the morning. It almost felt like I was in another realm, walking silently through the dark halls. The House of Wind wasn’t my chosen spot for when I wanted to be alone, so I was almost never there when it was silent.  
Only one lamp had been lit, in Clare’s bedroom, and it barely reached to the opposite corners. She sat in the armchair, her posture perfect because of her injury, a mug of tea cupped in both hands. I stood in the doorway for a moment and watched as she sipped and looked out the window at the stars.  
“I know you’re there,” she said after a while.  
“Is it okay?”  
“Yeah.”  
I pulled a chair next to hers and sat down. She kept looking out at the sky. The shadows and hollows in her face were darker than usual, but she looked better than she had in the healing complex.  
“How long are you going to stay up here?” I asked.  
She took a sip of her tea. “I don’t know,” she said. For a moment, she started to turn to me, but she quickly changed her mind and turned away.  
“Can we be proud of you for beating Beron yet?” I was trying to stay neutral and calm, but I couldn’t help but smile as I asked.  
Clare’s mouth tilted upwards, but the expression was gone as soon as it came. “You can be however you want,” she said. “I’m… I’m not there.”  
She closed her eyes for a minute, then opened them again. Yawning, she put the tea down and stood up. I could see her arm muscles straining to make up for her injury, and I reached to help, but she managed it alone.   
After watching her take a tottering step towards the bed, I stood up and put an arm around her waist. She froze for a moment, considering the feeling, and then allowed me to support her until she was under the covers.  
I put a hand on her shoulder as I put out the light. She looked at me, now that it was dark enough that our eyes were not completely visible.  
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said.  
She closed her eyes and nodded. “See you.”  
After a moment, I winnowed out.  
Feyre stirred as I carefully climbed back into bed. “How was it?” she asked.  
I put my arm around her and kissed her forehead. “It was alright.”  
As I drifted off again, I kept seeing flickers of her in that dim room, curled into some soft space, considering the outside world.  
Clare had always known herself. She had always been right about herself.  
I hoped she knew how to heal herself.


	36. Chapter 36

Dray  
The next day, I heard a voice in my head, soft but shocking.  
Can we work on the plan?  
Within a minute, I had uncovered the box of materials from under her bed. I stopped to tell everyone where I was going. Mor and Feyre recognized the box and nearly squealed with excitement when I announced my destination. Rhys looked at them quizzically, only understanding half of it.  
She was in one of the meeting rooms in the House of Wind, wearing baggy clothing. I sat next to her and put the box down between us.  
“Thank you for yesterday,” I said. “A million times over.”  
It took her a while to respond. When she did, it was while looking down at her hands.  
“I didn’t feel… happy when I did that. I didn’t feel the bravado like I used to. But I did feel more like myself, and less like… this.” She gestured to her presentation. “And I guess that’s better.”  
“It’s certainly better for us,” I said, taking a risk at humor. Her smile was quick to evaporate, but at least it appeared. “Let’s get to work.”  
“I think we should keep it at the next meeting,” she said, leaning forward and leafing through the top stack. “There’s no reason to wait.”  
“We don’t have to rush,” I told her. “There’s no harm in waiting. Whatever is best for you.”  
“I don’t know what’s best for me,” she said plainly. “Nothing is, really. But I’d rather have this begin in a month than a year, so why not?”  
I watched her as she skimmed a few papers, quickly sorting our tasks for the day. She looked tired and calm. I agreed.  
We worked in silence for a while, flipping through stacks and making edits. The plan was close to completion; we were just rounding out a few specifics. I was thumbing through a book on Night Court law when she spoke, so soft that I hardly noticed. “It’s not the mate thing.”  
I kept my eyes on the book, not wanting to spook her. “Yeah?”  
“Yeah,” Clare said, leaning back in her chair and running her hands through her hair. “I hadn’t gotten used to the fact that my future was set. I don’t mind having things open again. It’s not that.”  
“What is it, then?” I asked.  
She met my eyes for a second, then dropped them quickly. Her hands were clasped together.  
“I just love him, and I miss him, and it’s the absolute worst thing.”  
There were no words to follow that. Eventually, I slid my chair closer to hers, and she leaned into my shoulder. We went back to work without another word.  
Clare  
Not every day was better. Some days were worse.  
But every day was different. It was not a constant torrent, a weight that was never lifted. It came in waves-strong and frequent ones, to be sure, but they were not the same size and shape. Whenever I felt so terrible I could not bear it, I would begin to feel a different kind of terrible, and the counter would reset. Somehow, without me noticing, time began to pass, and I began to survive it.  
Dray came up nearly every day, and we would work in amicable silence. I liked feeling productive, although I couldn’t keep it up for very long. I spent the rest of the time sullenly doing physical therapy exercises, resenting the way my body used to move under his tutelage, or with his. Against my will, though, I worked hard, building my strength back up. This injury was not as bad as the first one. Two months later, I was cleared to fly for the first time since the kidnapping.  
I was cleared in the morning, but I spent the day avoiding the topic. I worked and trained on the ground and read part of a novel, ignoring the summons of the air. Finally, as the sun was setting, I went up to the roof. My father was there, as he often was, trying to stay out of my way while he spied on me.  
His face went pale as I stepped towards the edge, and the pallor retreated only slightly when I explained. “Be careful,” he said, his jaw hardening. I didn’t look down, but I’m sure I would have seen a smoky purple net near the ground.  
I unfurled my wings. The injured side of my core ached, but did not scream at the motion.  
Thomas and I had gone on midnight flights constantly, over the lights of the city and the darkness of the wild land beyond it. We had talked quietly, our voices mixing with the whistle of wind, and we had gotten into bed afterwards deliciously exhausted and peaceful.  
That would never happen again. Those nights were gone, and I wanted them back, and I wanted to punish the sky and the wind and the landscape below by no longer deigning to fly over it.  
But the landscape didn’t care about me, and neither did the sky and the wind, and neither did his corpse, the burial of which I had watched through a small cranny in Dray’s mind, huddled in a corner in this house. Nature did not mourn what I had lost, and it had not taken it away.   
So I jumped.  
The moment air shoved into my wings, pushing me upwards, I let out a shriek, because there was still beauty to be had.  
Papa watched me as I turned and soared above him, his eyes wide and sparkling. I smiled at him, but the expression vanished as soon as it registered. I hadn’t smiled fully, intentionally, since the battle. It felt strange and foreign.  
But he grinned back at me, gleeful and relieved, and something flickered within me.  
Beauty was not gone, and love was not either. One pocket of love was, and an important, irreplaceable one at that. But it was only one pocket.  
I hung above my father in the velvet air, watching the way he looked at me. The city glittered far below us. My body felt strong and capable.  
I remembered what I had done for Dray when Beron had arrived: how I had smirked, how I had argued, how he had looked at me afterwards.  
Suddenly, a truth flashed within me. It shocked me so much that I flew off, waving to Papa as I soared further into the dark wilderness.  
I would never get Thomas back, but I would get everything else.  
I flew over the shrouded forests until dawn. When I came back, orange and pink shining on my wings, Papa was dozing on the roof, and something raging and ragged within me had been smoothed.


	37. Chapter 37

Dray  
At breakfast that morning, Papa told us what had happened the night before, and everyone debated what it could mean.  
I knew the instant he described it that a turning point had occurred. Something fundamental had changed within her. Things today would not be the same as they had been the day before.  
But I still did not expect to go up to her room, planning to retrieve the papers, and find her sitting on her bed with Vitria surrounded by boxes of her things.  
“Can I wear this to a ceremony next month?” Vitria was asking, pulling a purple gown out of a box.  
“Sure,” Clare said, not looking at the outfit. She turned and saw me, a flicker of nervousness appearing on her face. “Hi.”  
“Hi,” I replied, taking a few steps forward. “What’s going on?”  
“I need you to not make a big deal out of this,” Clare said. “I can’t do it if you start blubbering about it.”  
“Okay,” I said, steeling my face.  
Clare swallowed. “I’m moving back in.”  
My face stayed stoic, not even smiling. But I crossed the room in three steps and wrapped my arms around her tightly. She stiffened at first, but eventually returned the embrace.  
“I have to go,” Vitria said. “I have a hand-to-hand class.” She stood up, the dress draped over her arm.  
“Let me know about the other classes you’re taking,” Clare told her. “I might want to go to one.” Vitria nodded and headed out with a smile.  
Clare took a deep breath, hesitantly smiling at me, and sat down on the bed. “I’m not just better all of a sudden,” she told me. “I’m not going to be the same just because I’m back.”  
“But you’re back. That means something, right?”  
She rubbed her eyes for a moment, then looked at me. They were shadowed but crystal clear. “That means something,” she agreed. “When I left, every bit of stimulus was painful. Now I’d rather fill myself up-distract myself-than sit with that anymore.”  
I nodded. Reaching under the bed, I grabbed the box of papers and set it next to her. “Will this serve as an adequate distraction?”  
She laughed a little. “Six days,” she said, opening the box and pulling out the opening sheets. “You ready?”  
I looked around the room, big and bright and messy. This felt right.  
“Hell yes,” I said.  
Mor  
That evening, we were in the dining room, talking loudly over plates of chicken and greens, the candles flickering with our collective breath as we laughed, the whole room full of noise and excitement. Then Dray entered with Clare by his side, and the room went stunningly silent.  
Clare pulled her chair from the side of the room where we had left it, only partially removed. She and Dray took their normal seats and grabbed plates, as if nothing was strange.  
“Hi, Clare,” Cassian said after a long moment, his voice a bit strangled.  
“Hi,” Clare said, her mouth full of kale.  
Before I could think of a way to ask inconspicuously, a voice echoed in my head, light and mischievous.   
Six days.  
I looked back at Clare. She raised her eyebrows, eyes glinting and mouth full.  
“Clare, are you back?” Rhys asked. The rest of us, who had heard the echoing voice and were struggling to contain our thrill, went solemn at his words.  
Clare’s body stilled. The laughter in her eyes dimmed, and when she looked at her father, it was with the residue of the grave.  
But she nodded anyway, and it was enough.  
“We’re coming to the meeting at the end of the week,” Dray said. He looked amazing, free from the weight of Clare’s absence.  
Rhys’s eyes widened. He looked to Clare, who stared back. As a flicker of steel appeared in her gaze once more, he broke into a relieved smile.  
He knew his daughter. He had been waiting for her to start pushing herself again, knowing what that meant for the healing process.  
She was back. And as the rest of us shared silent, shuddering glee around the table, we knew how powerful of a force had been brought back to our side.


	38. Chapter 38

Rhys  
Six days later, Feyre and I woke up early and sat out on our balcony, watching the sunrise and the city.  
We no longer feared this meeting. There had been too many of them. But we still made sure to take especially good care of ourselves on those days, when we were especially ragged and raw.  
I dressed in that dark suit. Although it was similar to everything else I wore, I saved it for these occasions. I felt taller and more removed the instant I put it on.  
Feyre no longer had to play such an exaggerated role. She now wore a gown more similar to Mor’s: still revealing, but not as ridiculously so as they had once been, when they had thought her a whore and a prize. Now, she was power.  
We met the rest of the Inner Circle out in the hallway, everyone finely dressed and quiet. At the previous year’s meeting, we had been boisterous before we left, distracting ourselves from what was to come. This year, there was an added layer to it.  
Dray and Clare had been to one of these meetings before, and had stayed for only thirty minutes. This time, according to Feyre, they would be doing some of their own work, separate from us. Mor and Cassian would be going with them, but still I worried.  
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked Mor for the thousandth time. “And why the hell won’t you tell me what they’re doing?”  
“Of course I’m worried about it,” Mor said. “But it’s the best idea I’ve heard in decades.”  
A door creaked open from the landing above us. We turned together, waiting. My heart was beating faster than made sense.  
Dray’s outfit was dark and fitted like mine, with a high collar. His hair was stiffly brushed back. If not for the unmistakable youth in his smile, he would have been imposing.  
Clare was on his arm, a more submissive position than she usually chose. I could tell instantly, by the slope of her shoulders and the rise of her chest as she walked out, that she was nervous. Maybe even terrified.  
But her dress was stunning, black and gauzy. The top was just as revealing as those worn by Mor and Feyre, but the skirt was full-length and swirled like smoke around her. Her hair was braided around her head; the cosmetics on her face were bold and precise. And she walked with purpose, despite the fear, and with her head held high.  
“It’s time?’ she asked as they walked down the stairs. We nodded.  
Mor walked up to them and gently grasped Clare’s hand. “Are you absolutely sure-” Her voice broke.  
My children looked at each other, then back at my Third.  
“Yes.”  
I had rarely, if ever, seen that expression on Mor’s face. When I glanced over at Feyre, she looked exactly the same.  
“Seriously, what the hell?” I asked.  
Dray turned to me and raised his eyebrows, just the way Clare always had. “You’ll see.”  
Clare did not echo the motion. She was not boasting the way she normally would on an occasion like this. She was still standing slightly behind Dray, her hand in his.  
But she smiled as he said it, and her eyes glinted.  
I kept watching her until we all winnowed out of the room.  
Our feet hit the stone floor of the Court of Nightmares with a jolt.


	39. Chapter 39

Keir  
I had seen Clare and Drakon once before, when they were fourteen. Scrawny and inquisitive and emanating an aura of power that already made me uneasy.  
We had heard rumors that something had changed aboveground in the eight months since we had last seen the Inner Circle. I suspected that an heir had been declared. So I was expecting to see one of the children at that meeting.  
My daughter showed up first, and there was something lighter and gleeful in the smirk she always gave me. And I was not expecting what she said.  
“The Heir and future Second would like to meet with you and your council privately. With Cassian and I, but without their parents.”  
I was shocked for only a moment. Even with those supervisors, this was something major. A chance to influence the next generation, free from the watchful eye of our undoubtedly overprotective High Lord.  
Leaving one council member to give Rhysand his briefing, the rest of us left the great hall and walked down the jutting stone pathways to our meeting room.  
The chamber was large and oval; the windows opened to views of more black, carved architecture with flickering lights illuminating sections. The whole space had been carved out of solid stone, and the table had never been separated from the floor. It was austere and mighty, and always caught the unfamiliar off their guard.  
Cassian was already seated, his face as stony as usual. Morrigan took a seat next to him. And on his other side were the children.  
They were no longer children.   
The boy was dressed like his father without the edge, the girl like my daughter with a little more class. Both of them gazed at me, and for a moment I thought that I might have underestimated them, but I swallowed that quickly. They put on a good show, was all.  
“Thank you for meeting us, Keir,” Drakon said first.  
“My pleasure,” I replied. “Why did you request a private meeting?”  
“We have a proposal for you-separate from our parents,” the boy said. I registered the papers spread in front of them.  
I slid into my seat, my council silently following. “Tell me.”  
Clare leaned forward, and her eyes flashed like her father’s.  
“How would you feel about an aboveground city?”


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!  
> Thank you so much for sticking with me, and I hope you've enjoyed this story. My next post will be the finale.  
> If you enjoyed this, which I hope you did, please check out my Instagram account, @alicewritesthings. I post snippets of my original book, thoughts about the writing process, political essays, and other stuff. I love writing fanfiction, but I don't have a new fanfiction project in the works at the moment, so I would urge you to look there for more of my creative process.  
> Regardless, thank you so much for reading A Court of Bonds and Fate. I honed my craft immensely by writing it, and it has been a really fun experience.  
> Thanks!  
> Alice

Clare  
His eyes moved just the way they were supposed to. I squeezed Cassian and Dray’s hands under the table.  
“You want to negotiate this-without your parent’s approval?” he asked.  
“We do,” Dray said with a tame grin. “I think that relations between our courts need to change in our reign.”  
Keir was practically salivating.  
“There are some conditions to this, of course,” I said. “Quite a few, actually.”  
His mask went back up, realizing his mistake. “Tell me.”  
“First of all,” I started, sitting up straighter, “you’d be paying for it.” I watched his eyes flash and continued. “We did the math. Your court won’t have bottomless wealth anymore, but you’ll still have plenty, and there’ll be revenue once it’s built.  
“Secondly, if you’re aboveground, you’ll obey all the laws set by my parents. Unlike in Velaris, you’ll be treated like any other citizen, but the city will be subject to the rule of the Court of Dreams.”  
Keir’s brow wrinkled. “I suppose we can accept that,” he said after a long pause.  
“Good,” I said. “Next, by gaining this city, you forfeit your right to freely visit Velaris. We can now impose sanctions on who can visit, and in what capacity.”  
He sputtered. “You can’t-and you already sanction us, you little-”  
“You can build your own Velaris if you like,” I said loudly, placing my hand over Cassian’s as I watched him tense. “It can be just as beautiful, and completely open to you. Furthermore, you will be able to trade with us, and that can take place right outside Velaris.”  
“Would you rather have that or your current situation?” Dray asked when Keir did not respond.  
He looked at us through narrowed eyes, finally seeing us for the first time. “I suppose,” he eventually muttered.  
“Great. There’s only one condition left.” Keir crossed his arms and jutted his chin out. I’m sure he was trying to look imposing, but in reality he was a child throwing a tantrum.  
I looked at Mor. She grabbed my hand and nodded, her eyes sparkling. We turned as a group, and I spoke.  
“We want to speak to each member of your court individually-regardless of gender, and any child over fourteen. And we want to give each of them the individual choice to leave or stay.”  
Keir’s face flashed up to meet mine.  
A moment later, I was being yanked back and behind Dray and Mor, and Cassian was gripping Keir’s shoulder hard enough to break a bone. Keir had lunged for me, but he had hardly been able to move.  
I stepped out from behind my shield, wincing as the pain from the yank settled into the old wound. Dray extended his arm, and I smoothly moved to lean on it as I began to speak again.  
“We are not attacking your culture. Within the bounds of aboveground law, you can keep your traditions and roles. You can even keep your females subservient. But we want to make absolutely sure that everyone who stays with you truly wants to do so.”  
“That’s completely asinine,” Keir said, panting. “There’s no way in hell we’d agree to something like that.”  
“Then you don’t get the city,” I said with a shrug. “We’re not negotiating these terms-and honestly, we could care less whether you want to do it or not. You have two options.”  
We waited, all breathing hard. The tension flickering inside me as we argued was hotter and brighter than anything I had felt in a long, long time.  
Dray slid the contract across to him. “This is an agreement to everything we just said. We’ll iron out the details later.”  
It stretched on and on. Inconspicuously, I leaned a little harder on Dray.  
You okay? he asked in my mind.  
Just tired, I replied, and it was true. I was tired, tired of being in mental and physical pain; I had been so for months.  
But I was also just tired, I realized, as I watched Keir stare at the contract like it was the plague. I was not on the verge of collapse. I wasn’t even in agony. Simple weariness felt like a relief, like weight lifted.  
That realization had me standing up taller, refocusing my piercing stare onto him.  
But it was nothing compared to the electric shock when he picked up the pen.


	41. Chapter 41

Clare  
Looking like each letter burned him, he signed his name.  
Once he was done, he walked over and handed the paper to Dray. “We will be working together in the future, Heir,” he spat.  
“Actually, Clare’s the heir,” Dray said casually. “I’m the next Second. But we’ll certainly be seeing each other again.”  
I stepped forward with confidence as Keir’s mouth gaped.  
“I feel the same way about you as my father does,” I told him. “And I doubt you’ll like me any more than you like him. But I will deal with you as High Lady. I will not deny you something out of spite that would benefit both of us.”  
He nodded stiffly and shook my hand, his grip painfully tight. I turned back to my group, who were barely holding their smiles in. “Let’s go,” I said.  
As we were approaching the door, we heard Keir muttering to his council. His voice echoed over to us.  
“She’s more of a bitch than either of her parents.”  
Cassian whirled around, his face a mask of fury. “Go,” I whispered, shoving him out the door. Dray’s expression matched, but he followed.  
I turned back to Keir, smiled sweetly, and flashed a middle finger as I walked out and closed the door.  
Outside, I stretched my arms up and took a deep breath. Dray pulled the signed contract out of his breast pocket and waved it.  
“Holy shit,” Cassian said softly. “I can’t believe you just did that.” Mor stepped behind me and wrapped her arms over my shoulders.  
“This is the future,” Dray said, looking at me. “This is the rest of our lives.”  
At the mention of the future, the now-familiar weight thudded into place, ripping open a section of my chest on the way. But there was something warm and rushing there, too. The good and the bad.  
There would never be an era of my life where I did not carry Thomas with me. There was before him, and with him, and now there was after him. It was as fundamental a part of me as my own lungs.  
But this era was going to be so, so long. There would be so much good mixed in with that weight. It was wide open.  
“Come on, we’ll tell them at home,” Dray said, registering the turbulence in my mind. I nodded and pressed close to him as he winnowed us back to the house.  
I stood in the foyer with the three of them for a moment, looking around at the warm white walls.  
“You can tell them,” I told the group. “I’ll be down for dinner. I’m going to go to bed.”  
“Are you sure?” Cassian asked. “We can wait if you want.”  
“Clare, to miss that reveal-” Dray looked worried. It was out of character for me.  
“I’ll get plenty of the moment when I come down,” I said, waving my hand. “Don’t wait a second.” And I turned and walked down the hall to my room.  
I walked out onto the balcony and sat down, looking at the glittering river below me. I was so tired.  
The luscious fullness of pride felt strange and foreign. I was doing my best to welcome it, but it was work-hard work-to let it fill me instead of shutting out. I wanted to respect the barren cold that lived within my chest now, that always would.  
I searched within myself for a drop of that cold. It was there, and it was soothing. I closed my eyes, considering the two feelings together.  
This is a long era, I thought, looking up at the sky. I didn’t have the slightest idea if there was consciousness after death, or where it would be located. But I hoped that he was up in the sky, and that the air was fast and serene around him.  
I love you. I’ll never stop. And if you’re watching me, I’ll give you things to see.

Filled with those thoughts, I dozed for an hour and a half, and when I woke up, the feelings had settled a bit. I changed into loose clothing, wiped my makeup off, and was just about to leave my room when Dray knocked on the door.  
He had changed too, and his eyes were glowing with ecstasy. “You told him?” I asked.  
“We did. I came to escort you down.”  
I took a deep breath as I accepted my place on his arm. “This is the future of the court,” I told him. He squeezed my hand and laughed.  
We walked down slowly, sharing our favorite moments from the meeting-Keir’s facial expressions, the tension in his shoulders as he signed, the way he looked at Mor as we left.  
And when I pushed the door to the dining hall open with a gust of wind, we were met with a standing ovation. Amren, Feyre’s sisters-everyone was there. My father was at the head of the table, and there were tears in his eyes.  
Dray and I bowed grandly, causing a chorus of laughter, and sat. I smirked at Papa from across the table.  
“I have one question,” he said.  
“What?” I asked.  
“What the fuck?”


	42. Chapter 42

Rhysand  
My daughter, she survived it. I don’t know how. I had very little to do with it.  
She was never the same afterwards, but she was not broken. By the end of the century, the scar across her abdomen was nothing but a visual reminder of those two battles. She trained again, getting stronger than she had been before.  
She walked ahead of me at the ceremony for the completion of Ambaguri, the city of nightmares in the light. We all conducted the interviews with everyone from the Court of Nightmares, and Mor jumped up and down as a chain of females, pale and free, walked out with us.  
She officiated Dray’s wedding to Magnus. He hadn’t thought she would even come, but she bound them to each other and celebrated them without a hint of sadness.  
And after a long, long while, she stepped out into that world again. There wasn’t another mate waiting; there wasn’t another lifelong partner. But she got that corner of her life back in some aspect, and I was proud.  
Feyre and I lived to be very old. We saw more conflict, but nothing like our first years. We watched Mor fall in love in the open, Nesta cast off her final shrouds, Lucien be declared Helion’s heir.  
When we knew the end was coming, we met with our children. We showed them the last few secrets we had kept, every hidden corner of the kingdom. They showed us the plans they had made for the future, and surprised us for the millionth time.  
We passed together, hands clasped, without worry. We had both gotten happiness we had never dreamed we could deserve. We had brought more good into the world.  
And that would carry on. The next generation was noble and brave and blindingly smart. They could do it.  
We passed, and we had no fear for the future of the Night Court.


End file.
